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 [Page 3]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 authority was now a setting, that the holy Spirit records three stories unparalleld by a­ny place of Scripture. And lest the cause of all might be mistaken, four times in these four Chapters, the same words are again repeated, In those dayes, when those were acted, there was no King in Israel:

First Micah) from a converted theife turns a superstitious innovator. He made an Idol of the Silver before, or else he would never have stolne it; but now emptying his soul of one Divel, he gives another free entertainment. Should our true service of God Almighty be half so dear, I fear his Temples would not be so well customed. But what he got lightly, he spends as liberally: Out go the eleven hundred Shekells, quantum nummorum servat in arca, tantum habet & fidei; his religion was as high prized as his mony could purchase; [Page 5] Gods house was not enough for him, he must have an house of Gods, an Ephod and a Tera­phim, [...] pretty new found Dieties, which must preserve their maker, give a well-being to him who but just now gave them their being.

The Old Woman his mother (a sex well skilled in such new-fangled religions) she likes very well of this new stamp'd devotion, and gives a blessing to him who brought a curse upon her and all her family.

But what shall we do for a Priest to offi­ciate to his golden vanity. Oh! Micah's very good at creating: His reverence cannot onely consecrate a God but ordain his Minister too: Holy orders are very cheap, where religion it self is at a loss; A God of gold can­not easily want servants, there will be some Chryses, some Calchis left. Rather then fail his Son shall be consecrated; the Hebrew word (if you look in your margins to the 5th. verse of the 17. Chap, of this b [...]ok) is ( he filled the hand of his Son) ingagement enough to this following service; once fill the hand and you have heart and all: We would not care so much for consecration, if the golden breastplate did not accompany it.

Yet least his new born piety may want some specious pretence, a poor Journey­man Levite is heard of, such one as God [Page 6]curses. 1 Sam. 2.36. That he shall come and crowch and say, put me into the Priests office that I may eat a morsell of bread: Such a Titi­villitius I say upon high way of acquaintance shall be content for 10. Shekells of Silver, a suit of cloaths and victuals besides, to cove­nant to serve this Idol-God: thus is our Familist confirmed in his new moulded Frame of devotion, his independent congrega­tion, and all this while, there was no King in Israel.

Next come your Danites, and there is a Tribe, [...], there is danger in a multitude, they have hands as well to practise as heads to plot their mischiefs: A private thiefe may abound with spoiles, but when a whole army turnes pillagers that Country must needs be desolate. Well! what fair mask did their vice borrow to co­ver this insolence? Their Country forsooth was too little for them, their climate was too cold. Five Brethren must be sent out for spies to discover the fatness of the land, that they might come and tast of the cup which flowed with milk and honey: These as they pass by Micah's house, hear the Levites voice which sojourned there; sure he had good lungs, that his tongue could so easily take acquaintance with the high-way travellers: Ten pound a year will be soon talked out, if [Page 7]he speak so loud: but hearing him, they must needs hear something from him; An exhortation from him will crown the work which they are in hand with: an act of blood if the pulpit bless it, must needs carry the Lord with it? He bids them go in peace, incouragement enough for them to prepare for waar.

Laish is their next stage, a quiet, careless, secure people, qui damna nec metuunt nec pa­rant, as free from fearing danger as intend­ing of it. With these glad tidings they re­turn and inrich the Danites ears: They now most truely make up Jacobs their Fathers prophesie Gen. 49.17. they turne Serpents by the way and Adders in the path. Albertus tells us, the Nature of the Creature is to fly from a cloathed man, but to set upon him if they find him naked: The Maacathites and Geshurites which live amongst them, are ar­med men, let them alone 'tis dangerous med­ling with them; but secure Laish had nei­ther strength nor men to aid it, the Zidoni­ans were at a farr distance, six hundred fighting men well appointed might do good service there: The land is very good, why sit you still, arise, make hast, enter and pos­sess it.

But Micahs house affoorded them so good entertainment in their first journal, hat [Page 8]they'l not balk it now in their second pro­gress. We have found idolatry upon Mount Ephraim, say the spies; an Ephod and a Teraphim, a graven Image and a molten Image, fine golden Idols, all of Micah's making, let us invite them on this journey with us: And there is a Levite too, no doubt but he will be content, to follow his golden Gods, and then assuredly we shall go and prosper.

Well! however they loved their Idolls well, (or else they would never have built high places to them afterward) sure I am they loved the gold better: Micah's house is rifled, his Oratory spoil'd; his guardian Gods could not now defend themselves: Sacriledge and Burglary are met together; and that false hireling Levite whom he took for his Priest, and Father proves his betrayer. He stands to make good the passage amongst the armed men in the gate, En filii tunicam: his lin­nen Ephod is turned into a coat of Male, and [...], his place he changed, but not his office: He thought it safer offending with a multitude; a Tribe in Israel, or two facti­ous Towns of that one Tribe, Zorah, & Eshta­ol, may well secure an Idoll Priest who goes triumphing in the midst of the Cutthroats.

If his Mr. Micah come crying after for resti­tution, he may be answered in the wolves lan­guage to the Crane, who plucked the sheeps­bone [Page 9]out of his throat. Away thou fool thank me thou hast thy head, which I might have so easily snapped off when I had thy long bill in my mouth: Speak softly Micah, these are angry fellows, and if thou talk much of thy Gods, thou maist loose thy Life, and all: Our next work is to plunder Laish to put all the inhabitants to the sword, and fire the City. And all this while, there was no King in Israel.

Lastly, that no society, neither of Fami­lies, Tribes, or Cities might be cleer, whilst the Danites are bathing themselves in inno­cent blood, the Citizens of Gibeah are acting a wickedness, farr more horrid, much more barbarous: A poor Levite of Mount Ephraim, whom love and charity had re­conciled to his offending Concubine, takes a weary journey after her to Bethlem Juda, and overtaking her he was so far from put­ting her to the shame which the publick Law requir'd against adultery, that he makes honourable provision for her more easie and speedy return; there is a couple of Asses with bread, and wine, and provender, him­self, and a servant to attender her. After some complementall interchanges of cour­tesie with his Father-in-law, he begins his journey homeward: Whilst the Sun shaming to behold the barbarous act of the Gibeonites [Page 10]sets upon him: Well, Gibeah he enters, when the courtesie of the inhabitants affoorded him the high way for his lodging place, where the Earth might be his bed, and the Hea­vens his Canopie; for what should a Man of God do in a house of one of these Sons of Belial? And this is the portion of honest Le­vites. The young Fellow in the last story that mouth'd it so well that his voice might be known at distance, found better entertain­ment at Micah's hand. Once sell your Con­science and you may soon buy Respect. You need not be a Priest to Idols as he was: the People will make an Idoll of you, fall down and worship you.

It happens that a poor old labouring man, a sojourner there among them, a stranger, it seems, to them, but more to their incivility, as he returned home from the field, spied these new guests of their city: He hails to them friendly, invites them to his homely cottage, and courteously imbraces them: When after provision of such simple delicates, as his not curious palate had pro­vided for himself, they chear themselves in the freest expressions of loving souls. But their mirth is soon blasted: The noyse of violence is a Voyder to the Feast. The house is beset by Incubusses, those hot Devils will not be cooled unless the Stranger be given out [Page 11]to satiate their lusts. We may wonder no longer why they were no freer to entertain him in their houses, since we finde by experi­ence, that they exposed him in the streets, that they might the more easily expose him to their injuries.

Well, to avoid this nefandum, this unheard of wickedness, a less mischief is imbraced: his Concubine is offered up as a Sacrifice to those Divels; whom they ravish, nay ravish her to death; These were the acts which were so good in their own eyes: Idolatry in Fa­milies, Burglary in Counties, Rapes in Cities, and all these because there was no King in Israel.

And good reason for it. For first a King amongst them would, Secondly none but a King, could curbe such licentious practises; he would I say, for he is the Minister of God which beareth not the sword in vain. Rom. 13. He is Gods avenger and executes his wrath on evill doers; It is the cowardly nature of sin that it flies away from the Magistrate though it be gathered into a Troop, like a heard of deer from a bearded Lion: Like the Lace­daemonian Servants, who durst not adven­ture themselves, after they had made a re­bellious head, into their Masters presence, although they came armed with nothing but switches in their hands: and this, whe­ther [Page 12]their inward guilt affright them, or Gods mark on his Anointed charme them to obe­dience. 'Twas quivering Orestas reply in Euripides (before his fault was published) to that [...]; what feavour shakes thee? 'oh 'twas [...]; 'twas a cold fit of conscience which would end in a burning fit of hell. And I am per­swaded that it was something more then our Saviour Christs Divinity which amazed that band Soldiers with their cursed Captain Judas, when they came to take him John 18. that they went backward and fell to the ground: Something more I say: For should he have called his Divine Power to assist him, he might have commanded ten thousand of Legions of Angels to have rescued him; nor would he the second time so freely have of­fered himself into their hands.

Then for the other, God hath bestowed upon all Magistrates an especiall Character, to secure them from any dangerous conspi­racies: Touch not mine annointed, (say's David,) Chro. 1.16. my Messias saith the O­riginal; as if the brow of Majesty were the nearest draught, the liveliest representation of Almighty God: from hence they were ho­noured in the purest times by the best Chri­stians with such appellations as did befit their greatness; their words, divalis jussio [Page 13]the audible voice of God, their presence, sacravestigia, the clearest footsteps of the Diety.

But then secondly, no other Estate or or­der could, at least could so well suppress such daring impieties; de facto we find they did not, not that they wanted an establisht form of Government, for we cannot believe that God would leave his People destitute: An interregnum of Judges here we find, from Sampsons death to Samuel: But High-Priests still contiuned. Yet what power had they, when Corahs infection (like Pliny's seeds kept many ages in the ground before they sprout,) began now to grow again, and every Micah durst dispence his holy Orders, and con­secrate a Priest of his own, good enough for a Religion of his own inventing? And for their Judges (had they at that time in­joy'd them) whether Evill Success under them, or Cruel Oppression by them, had so ali­enated the peoples mindes, that in the ve­ry next generation, Sam. 1.8. finding Sa­muel sons turning aside after lucre, and taking bribes, and perverting judgment, they with one mouth cry out for a King, for a King in Israel, which might appoint every man to do that which is right, not in their own eyes, but in the eyes of God.

Let us now make Israel our looking glass, [Page 14]and compare both our Estates and Actions to­gether, that thus laying these two crooked lines together, we may between them draw a right one, a right one, not as we our selves, but as our Overseers, [...], those which watch over us, shall determine.

First where have we any City, nay any Street, nay almost any Family, where Micah and his Mother, private Spirits, have not set up their Idols, their new stamped divinity? which Proteus-like changes shapes so oft, that two dayes old 'tis grown out of know­ledg: Error I have heard ere now compared to Hydra that monster with a hundred heads, but still the crown of truth was constancy: the Eldest Daughter of Almighty God, and so took place from her Fathers titles, and she was alwaies one and the same: But sure in these dayes she hath either degenerated into error or borrowed so much of the na­ture of it, as that shee's as various as the minds of those which are the assertors of her: and as Micahs Idols are here raised out of that stock which he first stole from his Mo­thers coffers, the mint of our Religions most commonly are some old wifes traditions, which new molten and new moulded work so deep an impression in our credulous souls, that they justle out the most solemn, devout, essentiall, divine parts of our service of God: [Page 15]Blasphemous wretches! ( I tremble to speak what these ears have heard) who durst ac­cuse our Saviour of indiscretion, and his Apo­stles of presumption, for leaving two such Legacies, a Prayer and a Creed to the suc­ceeding Church: Nay the very Canon of holy Scripture must wait for approbation in their corner Synodals, or else be no longer Canoni­call: Blest Saviour! thou didst once extort a Confession together with the blood of the Apostate Julian that his wounds open'd their mouthes with a Vicisti Gallilaee, now Christ thou hast the upper hand: Arise O God, plead thine Own cause, remember how the foolish man reproacheth thee dayly: forget not the voice of thine enemies, the presumption of them that hate thee increaseth ever more and more.

For Micahs dispencing holy Orders to his Son, alas we can spare that Labour, there is a rank smell of Popery breath'd out of the very name of Orders: Orders do suppose distinctions. We can be every man his own Priest: witness our Anabaptists the new sprung sect of Sebaptists and our other Fami­lists; we can pray for our selves, instruct our selves, Baptize our selves, bless our selves, curse our selves, and what you will: Dii ta­lem terris avertite pestem!

And yet perhaps if some young Levite with a lusty voice will take ten shekels and a [Page 16]suit of Cloaths, he may be put into imploy­ment. Pudeat dicere Academici! ex nobis no­stra est perditio; the Vipers which have eaten through the bowels of the Church are our own off-springs: These creep into the Pul­pit, God knows from whence, as some custo­mary birds at the time of the year into hollow trees, where out of zealous ignorance they dare declaim against all Authority as Antichri­stian, all antiquity as heretical, all moral-learn­ing as in it self damnable, which I confess is the best plea for their own ignorance.

The old Egyptians in their Hieroglyphical Characters made the Hyaena a Symbol of He­resie, which beast (if we believe Aristotle) had the power to blinde the Shepheards and make the Dogs dumb, then counterfeiting the Pastors voice, the simple Sheep came at their call and so were devoured by them: whether Natures Store-house have furnished the World with such a traiterous brood of creatures I will not here determine. But I am sure Religion has found too many of them. They creep into Congregations and blind the eyes of the Lawful Pastors, and perhaps have insinuated so farr into the hearts of the As­sembly that they make him dumb too, he may not be heard to speak: his Bells are crackt, his Pomegranates have lost their Savour: These are the only Spokesmen, and that so [Page 17]lowd, that the spies that travell by, may hear them, but the poor sheep, which dance attendance to their deceitfull voice, escape well if they lose nothing but their fleeces: Our Saviour Christ in 23 Math. 14. gives us intimation of such as upon a pretence of long prayers devour Widdows houses; I doubt, the woe comes down to these times: I'me sure the Levite here with Micahs Religion had packed away Micahs Estate too, if we look narrower to it: for thats the poor Mans complaint in the 24. Verse of the 18. Chap­ter, that he had no more left; and how many sad stories teach us when Souls and bodies, Goods and Goodness, Estates, and Religi­ons, have been shipwrack'd altogether. Well: Micahs story thats made up and in all this we have done that which it right in our own eyes.

Next come the Danites; where I shall not apply the circumstances, there is too much envy would wait upon them: But I am sure we have Zorahs and Eshtaols e­nough, factious Towns and Cities, which can furnish us with a tumultuous brood of dis­contented Brethren, which think their bor­ders are too straight, they must let out their appetites, and make more room for their active souls. And if Micah have a solitary house upon mount Ephraim in the way, let [Page 18]him take heed of pillaging: the suspition of an Idol within his doors, will be enough co confiscate all his goods and gold too, to this Exchequer; And truly if their Insolen­cy be not curbed, I beleeve they will disco­ver many unknown Idolaters: Scarce a Gold­smiths shop shall be past by, but some graven Image shall be found in it to make it a lawful booty.

But if the severity of the Law do restrain such private Burglaries, yet Gods house is sure to go to it. There be Idols in the Tem­ple: that's watch-word enough for a riotous Assembly: force open the Doors, break down the Windows, let the spies enter and the armed men keep the passage: but once in, tis not the Altar and Rails will serve them, no the Vestry & the Library, yes the poor mans box shall be suspected to have a golden Image in it: Nay there is no place secure, there is an Idoll in the Desk: away with the book of Common-prayer, teare it to pieces: There is an Idoll in the Pulpit too, or rather the Priest of I­dolls; hale him, pull him out, tear off the sacred Vestments from his superstitious shoulders: The Ephod and the Teraphim will not suffice; the Surplice and the Hood: Cherubims and Seraphins must all away, nay the very stones of the pavement shall be torne up, because men kneel upon them; [Page 19]Thus, O God, do they break down the carved works of thy house with axes and Hammars.

The Prophet David in that Psalm of La­mentations (where he drops as many tears from his eyes as letters from his pen, for the Desolation of the Sanctuary) Psal. 94. complains of the havock those unruly bands had made in the midst of the Congregati­ons: And the Septuagint Copies, (whether upon a Mistake in the first transcribing, or of set purpose I know not) render that word, [...] by [...], in­stead of burning his Synagogue, they say they will forbid his Festivals: And sure between those two there is a most near relation. No readier gap laid open for the neglect of Gods Sabbaths, then the prophanations of his Holy Temples: If the Beauty of holinesse once be lost, there will be very few that will continue Saitors to it: Set a cheap price upon Religion, and it will find but few Customers.

Yet who shall be the Ring-leader to this furious rout, but the young Levite who had covenanted to be Micah's servant? His voice at first call'd in the Spies to search the house, and now is the joyfullest man to be in the midst of the Assembly. How many cursed Chams hath our Church found, quae tanquam sorex suo periit indicio, such who are the rea­diest to discover their Parents nakedness; [Page 20]such who being Hirelings and not true Shep­heards, as our Saviour calls them, John 10. enter not by the door, but climbe in some other way, the same are thieves and robbers.

Nor yet will this Levite forsake his Golden Gods, he hoped I believe, ere long to have some limb or other of his Idoll stamp'd into lesser pieces and gingle in his pocket. His Mr. Micah was but a private man, and ten she­kells but a poor reward for the hazarding of his Soul: but if a Tribe of Israel will en­tertain him, choose their Religion hee'l be their Minister, hee'l serve them in it. Al­though we for ought find, when they were settled where they would be, they casheer'd him & Jonathan was consecrated in his stead: 'Tis so with us; Religion is a good cloak though many times Covetousness and Sacri­ledg are hid under it. Dionysius pluckes off Aesculapius his golden beard in Apollo's Temple, not out of fear of Idolatry least the people should fall down and worship it, but that he alone might adore it, when it was locked up safe in his own Coffers: Thus all the holiness of some of our Reformers has ere now proved but sacra fames auri: a reli­gious itch their fingers have had to be telling the Gold of the Sanctuary, which hath con­stantly proved an Achans wedge, corrupted and consumed the heap to which 'twas laid.

Thus the Danites story that's made up too, and in all this we have done that which is right in our own eyes.

The Last is the rape in Gibeah: but in sins of that nature we scorne to have patterns set us; wee'l out do all examples; that which once was said of Rome, is now more true of England, illic impune peccare licet: we dare sin without controul; else what mean those scandalous, adulterous, incestuous copu­lations, acted as if it were in despight (quam ingeniosa est haec nequitia) under the nose of those Courts which formerly have punished them?

But closer yet, this Ephraimite was a Le­vite which travailed thus patiently after his offending Concubines; but returning among the Benjamites, he finds them so far estran­ged from civil hospitality, that pro disco dam­num, lust back'd with violence is their most friendly salutations: None here I hope will deny but the Ministers in the Gospell are e­spoused to their severall Congregations: God Almighty is the Father which gives them in this mysticall Marriage. Where after much pains and patience, long suffer­ing and meekness they have travailed to reclaim their errors, and call them back to their first Loves: if they pass by the Benja­mites ( those ravenous wolves which love to de­vour [Page 22]the prey, and devide the spoyl, Gen. 49.27.) 'tis well if they finde high-way re­spect, and not be cudgeld out of that too. The Lyons courtesie goes a great way now, ( I assure you,) when he did no injury: More likely the young Children of the Bethlemites will meet them in the streets and cry go up thou bald head, go up thou bald head; but for their Concubines the benefices, every man must be better acquainted with them: They will lie with them, that is, Know them, one after another, make their severall im­propriation of them, and that all night, so long till they have made a custome of it: So that in the morning when this poor Concu­bine returnes to her Lord the Levite, she shall neither have life or heat to comfort him.

If a poor old Sojourner, one that hath e­nough to do to secure his own head from vi­olence amongst them, shall take these tra­veilers under his roof to protect them from the fury of the Citizens, he runs the same danger with them, and well if the prostitu­ting of his own Daughter can quit him from their hands: Gods mercy to his Church is such, that he hath alwaies raised up some to vindicate the reputation of it: yet some­times they are so far overborne that good Obediah, that Patron of the Prophets is e­very [Page 23]hour in danger of his own destruction 1 Kings 18. And whotsoever shall be so religious as to undertake their Patronage, although he plead not for Bigamy, plurality of Concubines (the old Ephraimite here did not so) but only that they may quietly en­joy the freedom of the place with what the Law of God and nature gives them, yet this very plea may indanger the prostitution of his own Daughter, the publication of his own Estate.

Thus the Gibeonites story, that's made up too, and in all this we have done that which is right in our own eyes:

You see the effects are come home to us within our doors, but the cause you will tell me fails: For in these dayes we have a King in this our Israel: And God be blessed that in these dayes we have a King: may the dayes of this King, in himself and his Royall race indure for ever: Yet let me tell you there is no great difference between having no King, and a King no whit obey'd: Or if any be, the latter is the most extreme, if malum culpae exceed that of poenae; for so we alter it from a punishment of God to a sin of our own.

When every churlish Nabal shall refuse to let distressed David enter commons with his own day-labourers, and partake of such [Page 24]provision as he had made for his sheep-she­rers, denying the least portion of his Estate, to Davids use, when the security of all his Estate consist, in Davids protection: And if Ahimelech the Priest (which has scarce bread enough to put in his own belly) shall feed him with some few loaves of the Sanctuary, and so refresh and strengthen him with a little Consecrated bread (al­though in the mean time he fast himself for it) it shall be cause enough for some treacherous Doeg to inform against him; and the next news will be Sauls command to his foot men, his Militia, to turne and slay the Priests of the Lord, because their hands are with David. When every re­viling Shimei as he passes by the high-way may freely and without controul curse the Lords Anointed; Nay more throw stones and durt upon him; bespatter his unble­misht name, and poyson his reputation with malitious and false slandours, dis­scourses, of most dangerous Consequences: When Achitophel his own bosome Friend and choicest Counsellour shall provoke all Israel against him, and put down Joab the Captain of the Kings Host, and set set up Amasa in his room: When Sheba the Benjamite [neither Priest nor Prophet] shall dare to blow the Trumpet in the high [Page 25]way, renounce David and send every man of Israel to their tents: When the King and all his Servants shall be forced from Jeru­salem that Royall City, and receive no en­tertainment as he passes by Bahurim, till he come to Mahanaim far off, where old Barzillay remembers his Duty, and per­forms his allegiance better. If these scattered drops do fore-token a black storm a com­ing; if these thick mists which fall so fast, may easily convince us that our Suns a set­ting, we need not go farr to seek a cause for those forenamed Insolencies. I am ama­zed, Sirs, when I behold the purest times of our Religious Forefathers, and see those blessed Martyrs, even when they were dressed up in flames, and accompanied Eliah to heaven in a charret of fire, when they were grinding between the teeth of Li­ons, when they were driven to the tops of Mountains like so many sheep to the slaughter; when their ingenuous Tortu­rers were overcome at their own art, and could invent no punishment answer­able to their patience: Then, at their hower of suffering, to hear them pray for their Persecutors, to hear them poure out their Souls in their most pious devoti­ons, for a blessing on the heads of those Tyrants under whom they suffered: fight­ing [Page 26]against them indeed, but cum precibus & lachrimis, with those melting swords of prayers and tears: And we, which injoy all those blessings which a peacable government can inrich a Land with, we which fit every man under our own Vines, and our own figtrees partaking of the fatnesse of the Land; vve vvhich are vvith as much severity kept off from idolatry, as the Old Christians were inforced to it, vve vvhich novv hear the bells toll quietly to bring us together to the publick service of God, which (were it not for this government) we might expect would be jangling in a more dismall tune, ringing a funeral peal to the Town or City; that we Christians, We Protestants should conceive a mischief against the King in our private bed-cham­bers; nay more, should unbridle our tongues so farr as to expresse those thoughts, nay more yet; should put those thoughts and words in Action, and lift up the finger a­gainst the Lords Annointed.

I bring not in a Zisca's drum, a ratteling of the elements to terrifie Children with fantastick fears; I would to God the times were such that I might give my self the lie. But alas ye all know 'tis true; it is, and hath been acted: We have a minde to Micahs Idols, to Dan's robbery, to Gibeas rape, and [Page 27]therefore we are for no King to Israel.

The confusion of my Text is so great, that I have lost all Method, I will not seek now to recover it: but shut up all with one Paraenesis. You see the evil, 'tis general, it extends to every man: and there is but one Salve too, which we can properly call, [...], a King amongst us: A pretious oint­ment 'tis, and as pretiously to be laid up, laid up by prayers for him, by hands with him, by purses to him of all good subjects. The breath of our nostrils, the life of our liberties, the strength of our hopes the pillar of our Re­ligion: his Commission is signed from Heaven, Pro. 8.15. By me Kings raign. His Authority is conferred by Heaven, Chron. 1.16. He is the Anointed of the Lord: His power descends from Heaven, Psal. 21.1. The King shall re­joyce in thy strength, O Lord: Obedience to him is required from Heaven, 1 Pet. 2. It is the will of God that you submit your selves to the government of your Kings. I have heard the Prophet David suspected by some as partial in his own cause; just like the Northern Borderers, who conceived the eighth Com­mandment (Thou shalt not steal) to be none of Gods making, but foisted in by Henry the Eight, to shackle their theevish fingers: I am sorry that ever the Truth of Scripture should depend upon the arbitrary opi­nion [Page 28]of men: but if S. Paul have gained a better credit with them, I dare oppose the 13. Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, against the power of Men or Devils which would trample upon the neck of Kings: Let every soul he subiect; mark the stile: There's a Statute Law enacted in the high Parliament of Heaven, which no man that owns a soul may break without high Trea­son against man, and higher impiety against God. But if our doughty valour have got so much confidence as to fight against the Spirit of God, the apprehension of our own advantage might be a powerful argu­ment, me thinks, to establish this doctrine: Since in vindicating the right of Princes we assert our own: By setting up a King in If­rael, we pull down Micah's Idols, we stop the Danites forces, we quell the lust of Gi­beah. 'Tis Our battels he fights, 'tis our Laws he enacts, 'tis Our Liberties he de­fends, 'tis our Life he protects: he watches for us, he is exposed to personal hazards for us, he writes for us, he draws the Sword for us.

Ye know the old story of all the mem­bers mutenying against the lazy Belly: The accusation was, that it consumed all, but got nothing: but they denying their usual contribution, you'l soon finde who went to [Page 29]the worst of it. The hands were, feeble, the mouth pale, the feet weak, and the whole Common-wealth of the body was out of frame. If Moses do not stand in the top of the Mount, with the Rod of God in his hand, Exod. 17. and hold up his hand too; Ama­lek will soon overcome the camp of Is­rael.

God hath blest this Land to the Admi­ration of our Neighbours round about, with a Prince in whom Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other, and carsed for ever be the bramdles of Jotham, which would overshadow the Cedars of our Libanon: But were he as detestable for his vices as he is now honourable for his vertues, this were no fair plea for our disobedience: A wicked King may be an effect of Gods wrath against a Nation; but the removal, the taking away this wicked King, that's hotter, that's plain fury, Hos. 13. 11. Sup­pose him very wicked, he ha's the more need of thy prayers to make him better. Suppose him to be a Tyrant, he will give the fairer occasions to exercise thy vertue of Patience. Suppose him to be a Persecutor, hee'l do thee a courtesie, he will send thee to Heaven by violence. It is not oleum gra­tiae, but Dominii, that Kings are anointed with: Saul was touched with this Oyl long [Page 30]before the Spirit of God came upon him, and this Oyl was not wiped off, it swam uppermost still, it had the preheminence long after, when that evil spirit did pos­sesse him.

If we took to the story of the 26 of the first Book of Samuel, when Sauls guilty con­science gave him leave to sleep in the trenches of Hachilah, with his men of war round about him, we shall finde as many arguments to arm Davids hand against him, as ever met to depose a Soveraign Title: First on Sauls part, he was an unnatural Tyrant against his own son Jonathan, he was a bloody Persecutor of the Priests of God; he was a sacrilegious Usuper of their holy Offices, he was a deamoniacal furious man possessed with a Devil: Next on Davids part, his life was sought for, and by sparing Saul he should undo himself: he had all the opportunity that night and security could ad­minister to him: he was Sauls adopted son by Michals marriage, he was successour to the Kingdom by the Prophets unction; and yet for all this, as if he had been a Cham­pion to maintain the right of Princes, he stops Abisha with a quis unqum? Who can lift up the hand against the Lords anoynted? And he that did it afterward, though upon Sauls own intreaty (if himself may be be­lieved [Page 31]found him as stout a revenger, as he was a bold challenger: He brings News of Sauls Death, but is sent after him the grave. I am amazed, Sirs, when I hear mention of the Loyalty of some old Heathen, some of them exposing their bodies to the deadly stroak of the enemies, to secure the person of their Emperors. Others leaping alive into their Funeral piles, as if they could do them no later, no greater service. But I will name no more, lest their dust fly in our eyes, so blinde and eclipse the glory of Christians: For let me seriously put the question: Are we Christions? Do we know the vertue of in Oath? What think we then of that so­lemn Oath of our Allegiance? An Oath which can receive no dispensation, no absolu­tion from what power soever: Are we Pro­testants? Nay one step farther yet; are we Protestors? What think we then of that branch of the late Protestation, that I will maintain the establisht doctrine of the Church, as it stands in opposition to Popery and Popish Innovations: I conceive this mainly material to the work in hand, therefore give me leave a while to insist upon it.

What is the doctrine of the School of Jesuits, Bellarmines position will fully tell us, non licere Christianis tolerare regem haereticum, [Page 32]&c. Princes falling into Apostacie from the faith or heresie in the faith, lose all dominion over their Subjects: and our own Countriman, Parsons goes a little farther, that the People if they can gather strength sufficient ought to depose such an unworthy Governour: and like apt Scholars they will learn their lesson quickly; for thus a Jacobine with an Assassination shall soon make good in pra­ctise what their School hath taught them. Thus without much straining they make good the Text: Those there work their pleasure because there was no King in Israel, these here will have no King because they might the more freely work their pleasure.

Contrary to this is established doctrine of the Church of England in the 37th. Ar­ticle: The Kings Majesty his the chief power in this Realm of England, and his other Domi­nions: and is not, nor ought to be subject to any Jurisdiction whatsoever, but may and must re­strain with the sword the Stubborne and Evil do­ers: Farr different (it seems) from that he is tobe restrained by Stubborne and Evil-do­ers, upon a pretence of his evill doing: To which purpose are those six parts of the ho­mily against Rebellion so full and apposite that we must either disclaim them from being the interpreters of the Doctrine of our Church, or sit down convinc'd in the manifest truth of this assertion.

To these I shall and the Testimony of some unquestioned Divines amongst us, purpose­ly avoiding the authority of such who are amongst some men (perhaps, unworthily) suspected, lest their names prove a blemish to the Calendar: Bishop Cranmer (in his Necessary Erudition for Christian Men) (A work composed by him and other Divines of Henry the Eight, and printed long since by the same King) upon the fifth Comman­dement, declares that, by it we are bound not to withdraw our Fealty Truths Love and Obedi­ence from our Princes, for what cause soever it be, nor yet for any cause may we conspire against his Person, nor do any thing towards the hin­drance or hurt thereof or of his, Estate. Not long after, Bishop Hooper, upon the same com­mandement determines, that if he be naught, that rules the place he is in, it is the Order and work of God: so if thou put a difference between the Office it self which is good, and the Officer which is evill, it shall keep thee in a religious fear that thou reverence a good and godly Go­vernment in a bad Governour. Bishop Latimer a Companion of them both (in a Sermon up­on Twelfday) tells us, that we may for nothing in the World (observe the Universality) rebell against the Ordinance of God, that is the Magistrate. All these three glorious Saints did in their Actions consirme their Doctrine, [Page 34]and in the days of Queen Mary received the triumphant crown of Martyrdom, obey­ing her in suffering for that, which their consciences would not give them leave actu­ally to perform. Next them comes that painfull and Reverend Bishop Jewel, who dispuring the Case with Harding drawes is­sue in the story Chilperick of France: whom the Nobles deposed; the people were conten­ted with it, and then Pope confirmed it, (rebellion as well strengthened as we could wish) yet did his Succcessor Pepin scarce ever with quiet injoy the Kingdom; and of the nine Generations (which were all that of that race succeeeded) hardly one was found which went down into the grave in peace. Dr. Humpheryes Sermons upon Abisha's story 1 Sam. 26. are so full to our cause in hand, that I should do him wrong to cite any part of him, and not spin it put to a just Treatise: I referr yee to the book it self; as also to Bi­shop Bancrofts English-Scottzing; Bishop King in his 35. Lecture on Jonas makes it the very case of the Brownist, who in his refor­mation would tread Conscience, Obedience, Religion and Duty both to God and Man under foot. Whereupon the Reverend Bi­shop Davenant in his twelfth determined Question tells us, induant quam venlint pietatis larvan [...] isti Magistratuum (marke that Ma­gistratuum [Page 35]not Religionum) reformatores, Al­biniani tamen Nigriani out Cassiani rectius au­dient, quam Christiani; Let them mask un­der what cloak they will, Religion may be their plea, but Rebellion is their practise. I shall forbear the envy of naming such as are still alive amongst us, of whom Bishop Morton is not the least; But one passage of the Re­verend Primate of Armagh in a speech in the Castle Chamber may not be forborne, because of the Universality of the position: There is nothing so contrary to the nature of Soveraign­ty (which I hope we still allow our Kings, if not how fell they from it?) as to have any Su­periour power to over-rule them: Qui Rex est, Regem (Maxime) non habeat: I forbear Se­ravia, because although one of our Church, yet a stranger born; and the Learned Erwin of Scotland: their works will testify sufficiently: Yet if you desire to know the consen­tient opinion of the Protestant Divines, take Calvin in his 25. Sect. of his 4. book of Insti­tutions; Beza in his exposition on the 13. to to the Rom. and the Harmony of them all, in the confession of the Helvetian Divines in the 19. Sect. Article 25. They have prepared against Sophistications in their Anathema: there is put in both the palam and the Arte too, whosoever openly by offence, as well as cun­ningly pretending defence shall do it, there [Page 36]is a damnamus past upon him, there is sen­tence given by the Church against him, acquit him who will.

These are men whose names will tell you never were yet suspected for a Malignant Party: Should we blot out these from the Catalogue of the Churchy, I fear we had but a poor Charter for our Religion; if we esteem them as they are, Protestants, I wonder how we can make so brave a flourish with this late taken Protestation in our hats, and ba­nish the genuine interpretation from our hearts.

If then there be any here with whom that sacred name of Majesty, like a high 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 [Page 37]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 [Page 38]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 [Page 39]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.

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, 'tis 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.

'Tis 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, 'tis 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 [Page 43]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 of Al­mighty God, who had promised this digni­ty long ago to the seed of Abraham Gen. 17.) God takes the affront as put upon himself 1 Sam. 18. They have not refused thee, but they have refused me that I should not raign over them: So constant is Almighty God to his [Page 44]own principles, that although in things in­tended by himself, he will not be prevented by the phantastick desires of men.

Well! Israel thus founded had many ene­mies: furnaces at lest to cleanse them from their dross: Intestina pericula, pills left in the bowels of their possessions to purge out their corruption: Five Lords of the Phi­listines, and the Zidonians and the Hivites and the Jebusites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, who would claim title of inhe­ritance to this land of promise. Amongst these, Jabin a Mighty Man (that had nine hunderd Chariots of Iron, and a powerfull host, whose Captain was Sisera, that lived in Harosheth,) like a near neighbour, he lies heavy on them; he oppresseth, the Sons of Israel. Those which would shew their skill in fetching proper names from their origin­nall, (and indeed your old Geneva Bibles do it) tell me that Sisera signifies a foreseer of Horses, and Harosheth a wooden place of strength; once get a place of strength, and then pretend some fears and jealousies of I know not what impossible conceits, that naked Israel (which had not a speare among forty thousand in the beginning of this Chap­ter) is preparing strength of Horses, or I know not what, 'tis provocation enough for Sisera to go up against them.

Their judge Deborah (a Woman of most masculine Spirit) was under a Palme tree, in the highway to Mount Ephraim: Whe­ther excluded her City or not, I cannot tell, but the text sayes there she dwelt: And truly why may we not think excluded? 'Twas Davids lot afterward, who had more Majesty and title too, in and to the Royal City, which himself had raised; yet forced from thence, Bahurim and the other places as he passed by, proves as ungratefull as Je­rusalem her self. She with her Co-partner Barak, at the Lords appointment do prepare for Battle: But alas nisi Dominus — unlesse the Lord had been on their side, all the for­ces they could gather had not been enough for Siseras host to breath themselves upon. Reuben they finde divided, Gilead would not pass his borders: Asher had possessed himself of the Sea Coasts and the strong holds, he thought himself securer there: Dan was imployed about the ships, he will make the coasts sure, whatsoever becomes of the Countrey within: Yes, naviget Anty­ceras, a little Hellebore would purge his brain better and make him wiser. Onely the two Northern Tribes Zebulon and Napthali, with ten thousand men which offer themselves willingly will undertake this quarrell. Yet let me not bespatter all the rest: Ephraim, [Page 46]and Benjamin, and Machir the son of Ma­nasses, and Issachar too, all Southern Counties sent out some Nobles, which were so bold as to be honest, and associated themselves in this holy war. And I know not how there crept in some that handle the pen of the writer too, which might make Gods battails famous, and record to after ages those sto­ries which the sword here had wrote in blood. Those Judges which escaped the noise of the Archers came down upon their white Asses: and although the Laws are mute where the Drum speaks, they durst then tell them what the Law was, they durst sit in Judgment, and speake the righte­ous acts of God. As for the rest, they chose them new Gods, ( novum cultum saith the Paraphraser) new forms of devotion, new moulds of the old Religion, if you will; eve­ry one made an Idoll of himself and wor­shipped his own inventions.

Well, their Army thus confederate pre­pare their march: But where is their Am­munition? No armour but that of faith: not one shield or speare amongst forty thou­sand men in Israel: and as little hopes of supplyes was there in other places: Asher had stop'd the coasts, Dan had seized the Ships, the high wayes were beset, and the travellers glad to walk thorough by paths. [Page 47]But Deborah arose, Deborah that mother in Israel: She knew that Gods hand was not shortned that he could not redeem, nor his power diminished that he could not deliver: Joshua had tryed it before with trumpets of rams-hornes, Ehud with his two edged sword, Shamgar with his ox-goad: He which before had slain five Kings with hailstones, could not he muster up an army of stars to fight in their courses against the army of Si­sera? Timere metuit: tis the Lords appoint­ment, she dares not fear it, but marches on couragiously, whilst her generall Barak leads on the forces, to Mount Tabor the randevouz. A little distance from the Mountain was the village Meroz, whose neighbouring Situation might well have succored them, if not with a greater strength of men for a reserve at need, yet with a necessary shelter in the day of Battle: But this, whether affrighted with the chariots, or trusting to the horses of the ene­mies troops, shut in themselves and shut out the Israelites they will not come to hely the Lord.

And indeed what need of help has he, in whose name all help consists? The battle joynes; the Charets are discomfited, Sisera leaves his Coach and flies away on foot: and Deborah returns back a triumphant Con­queror. Yet least She should forget that God that taught her hands to fight, and her armes [Page 48]to break those bows of steel. She sings a Paean, a song which a Quire of Angels would Eccho too, a song of triumph to the Lord of hosts: In the midst of which, as it were a sharp, a relish to all the rest, she brands this ingratitude of Meroz in the Text. Curse ye Meroz (sayes the Angel) curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

I shall be very brief in the Theory of my Text. Discourses of this nature require more practise: In the words behold an Anathema, a sentence of excommunication (if you will) pronounced: And accordingly to make it legal, here are all the parts of it: 1. There is the hand and seal, the authority confirm­ing it, The Angel sayes it, 2. There is the form of the sentence, curse ye; yea curse ye bit­terly: 3. There is the Excommunicate per­son, Meroz and her inhabitants: 4. There is the crime of which she stands convict, a ne­gative fault, a sin of omission, for not helping the Lord, not helping the Lord against the mighty: Oppositions seem here at the first view abundantly to meet: The ark of God and Dagon you would think were content with the same roof: here is the Angel of God, that messenger of glad tidings, with curses in his mouth: heres God the Lord Almighty has need of help against the [Page 49]mighty: here is the first Caos moulded up together, yet with your patience, out of this darkness God may inable us to produce some light.

First the Angel speaks it; and well there is so good authority. If this blazing starr from Heaven, had not pointed out this judgment, holy Deborah would have blessed her enemies, and prayed for them that used her thus despitefully. I will not trouble you here with the Schoolmens quarrels what this Angels name was, or of what Order in the Heavens, whether he defended visi­bly, or motu Angelico, insensibly: pretty cob­webs these are to catch flies in. Or whether this Angel were her confederate. Barak, in­spired by Heaven with a Prophetick soul, which Peter Martyr thinks a probable con­jecture: be it one or other in idem res rediit, this we know, that in times past there was a [...] divers wayes and manners, how God spoake to our fore­fathers by the Prophets: Saul (it seems) 1 Sam. 28, Made tryal of them all, he sought God by dreams and visions, by Urim and the Prophets, but finding Heaven inflex­ible, Acheronta movet, a witch at Endor must do the feat, and raise up the Divel in Samuels mantle to inform him: which Ne­cromantick Religion I would to God it de­scended [Page 50]not down to these our dayes; Too many I fear me, finding their dreams grown ridiculous, and their visions blinded, and dis­daining the Urim, the pretious stones of the high Priests breastplate, and the Pro­phets, have but one refuge left, some old woman which can raise up Samuels Ghost, a Divil in a Prophets likeness, which without the wages of Balaak, or the expectation of an Angel of God, can make every Cup­boards side or tables-end the top of Pisgah, and the top of Peor, from whence they spit out their poyson upon the host of Israel: Nos autem Christum non sic didicimus, if any Man amongst us be thus contentious we have no such custom nor the Church of Christ: Deborah was a Prophetess yet durst not she strain her authority thus farr: but signatim di­cit, least this curse should pretend to a mo­rality and prove a leading case to all succeed­ing ages, she shews her patent and produ­ces her authority, The Angel of the Lord sayes it. And let us give Gods Angel this honour to affoord him, 1. A Credendum 2. A Tremendum, 3. A Cavendum:

Credendum 1. Gods Angel is but his mes­senger, and shall God speak it and the thing not come to pass? Tis confirmation enough to me that Meroz fell under this bitter curse, because neither sacred Scripture, nor hu­mane [Page 51]writer that (I can find) did ever since make mention of it: And indeed Sirs, lets take heed; there are [...], Angels up­on the Earth still: The Church has Angels saies St. John, and the Woman of Tekoah thought the King of Israel was at least [...] as the Angel of the Lord: Thus when the Angel of the Church curses shall our souls be so irreligiously incredulous as to call it brutum fulmen, a squib in the air, or if the Angel of the state curses, to call it fulmen br [...]ti, Hannibals fagots on his bulls hornes to make them roar the lowder? Experience will be a sharp a Mistriss, when we shall one day feel the Burthen of that which we would not believe.

But, 2. Tremendum. Manoahs Wife thought the face of the Angel very terrible, and at that time when he comes to comfort her Judges, 13. and shall not Meroz tremble when he comes to curse her? This is most truly [...], the Eclipsing of the Sun, the blacking over the face of Heaven. Vaenobis (saies St. Bernard) si quando provocati sancti Angeli peccatis & negligentiis, indignos nos judicaverint praesentia & vifitatione sua. Unhappy Sodome when her daring sins put Lot and his Angels to flight; but infinitely more unhappy, when they came armed with fire and brimstone to destroy it. Our [Page 52]good God created them Ministring Spirits, partly for the use of Men, ore whom he gave them charge; though all that time he never lessens their joys of Heaven, there is exterius Ministerium, sayes Gregory, but still there is interior contemplatio: But when our guardi­dians prove our executioners, when the Sheepheards which should quarrel with the wolves, devour the flock: when the Cherub that defends the garden of Eden, brandishes a flaming sword to drive out Adam, let us fear and tremble.

Lastly, Cavendum: if we fear that curse, beware that sin which caused it: when Jo­nathan shoots an arrow o're Davids head, tis enough to make David fly the place, to beware his Fathers vvrath: Here is one ar­row shot over us, and it lights on Meroz, but the bow is bent still, and armed with as great a curse, a curse for cursing, if not for not going out to help the Lord, I am sure for going to fight against the Lord: this vvas par­ticular here and occasionall, the other is ge­nerall and eternall. God speaks that, the Angel of God speaks this: Curse ye Meroz (sayes the Angel of the Lord) yea curse yee bitterly the inhabitants thereof.

We are novv come to the sentence: Curse yee, yea curse ye bitterly, that is, curse ye with a cursing, in the originall: in vvhich I [Page 53]will not so farr interest my self, as to think to teach you, that it is a Hebraisme: yet thus far give me leave to note, that these ingeminations are either used asse [...]erando, as a note of confirmation, as that in Genesis 2. in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely dye, moriendo morieris; or intendendo, as a screw to set it higher, as this here, execratio­nibus execramini, curse ye bitterly. What a curse is I shall satisfie my self, and you too I hope, in a plain Narration from Aquihas: Idem est maledicere (sayes he) & malum di­cere, in his 76. Question 2.2. cursing is the same, with speaking or wishing evill: And so a man may curse as many wayes as he speaks: which is either Enuntiative, decla­ring what is done: Thus Deborah in this song may be said to curse Sisera, in that Rhetorical Catastrophe which Jael brought upon his life, At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet, he bowed, he fell, where he bowed there he fell down dead: or 2ly Imperative by commanding what should be done, which none, can challenge but they which have soveraignty, as God or his Messengers, like the Angell here; or 3ly Optative, by wishing what might be done, as [...] most execrations are. The first is in it self indifferent, neither good nor evil, unlesse detraction accompany it; [Page 54]The two last are alwayes evill unlesse some occasion of a greater good do invite them: And this good is double, 1. Either that of justice; thus God may curse immundum mundum, the unclean World: Elisha may curse the reviling brats; and the Church may curse the bastard of spring of Sectaries, which like the Mices birthday, fill the moun­tain with abundant squeeking in the bring­ing forth, but then nascuntur ridiculi, you may know they are empty vessels because they sound so much; or secondly the good of profit, that affliction may reduce them: As David Psal. 9. wisht a terror upon the Nations that they might know themselves to be but men. From hence then we shall receive a speedy satisfaction, to those three que­stions, which are only material, 1. penes quos est, in whose power this power of cur­sing lies, 2. ad quos attinet, on whose shoul­ders it will fall; 3. in quantum praevalet, with what burthen it presses: there is in­finite distance between all these: here is abyssus abyssum invocans, one deep calling upon another; only a powerfull hand from heaven can throw down vengeance, only a sinners neck can bear it, and if this thunder­bolt be not stopt only the pit of hell can bound it. From heaven it comes, whether immedi­ately from God himself, or from his Dele­gates: [Page 55]The first can make that serpent lick the dust of the earth, which but just now as­pired to the Scepter of Heaven: he can make Cain a Runnegate in his own land, and fear the stroak of death from man, when he and his father summed up [for ought we know] the total number of mankind. The other have it by Commission and that Com­mission, they had need take care should be well signed, or else their arrows will recoyl upon their own bosoms, and they will provoke God to blesse by their malitious curses. Some good expositors are of o­pinion, that all the curses denounced in the old Law shall rather be interpreted for propheticae praedictiones, then imprecationes maledicae: But what ever power they had, I am sure 'tis now limited; there is an E­vangelical temper if we believe Christ that speaks it; when James and John would have been a flashing in the clouds, and followed Elias in the Law, for fire from Heaven on the Village of the Samaritans: Christ cooles their furious zeal with ano­ther Spirit, Luke 9. he rebukes them say­ing, ye know not what manner of Spirits ye are of: Fo [...]bear such legal threats, if you follow me your Master, I came to save the World not to destroy it. For Ana­nias and Saphira's judgment, 'tis true it [Page 56]came from heaven; but unlesse you en­terline the Text and read it with specta­cles to make it bigger, it will no way appear to be caused by Peters Curse. So that if we compare St. Pauls precept, Rom. 12. blesse and curse not, with his anathematizing Text, 1 Cor. 16. we shall soon find the Church has no keyes left to shut up Heaven but those which Christ left, as a Legacy in that sacred ordination of his Apostles.

But secondly this curse is only due for sin, that being the adequate object of the wrath of God: Hence does St. Paul think [...] doing good, will be an undoubted shield against the power: So that Bellar­mines, Uteunque ferit, will prove but a blunt push, his excommunication undeserved is but a bull without hornes, crackers ty­ed upon a line; flash they may, but wound they cannot. Lastly to Hell it goes if not prevented: The Royall prophet in the 37. Psalm sayes that, they that be cursed of God shall be cut off: Cut off from the Earth first, as Pharoah and his crew of persecu­tors, (after they had blunted the arrows of God with often wounding, though they could never yet pierce their hardned hearts:) his final destruction is threatned, Exod 9.15. he will cut them off from the face of the Earth: But 2. cut them down [Page 57]or a passage for them down to hell too; witness Corah and his rebellious Conspira­tors, quibus dum non essent digni vivere [sayes Optatus] nec mori concessum est: not deserving to live, they were not vouchsa­fed to dye: sepulti sunt priusquam mortui: they which had made a seperation from their Fathers, may not be suffered to be gathered to their Fathers, but go down quick to Hell. This is the effect of a curse, a curse arising from a just cause, proceeding from a just Judge: If this be the cause of Me­roz, let her beware, and sure it is, for her judge is just that speaks it, the Angel sayes, Curse ye Meroz and her inhabitants.

We are come to the Persons upon whom the censure falls, Meroz and her inhabitants: Where I will not make you sport to tell you what pains Rupert takes (although he cite St. Hierom for it) to make Meroz the praesident Angel of the Canaanites, and the inhabitants to be the people under his pro­tection. Gerrae germanae, it is not worth confuting: Here is no Labyrinth that needs a clue, or if there did, expositors with one mouth assure me, that this village Meroz was a place adjoyning to the field of battle, which must now be made [...], a piaculum, a sacrifice to Gods curse to expi­ate the degenerate backwardness of the [Page 58]neutrall tribes. Well may the gates of the Temple be made of Cedar trees; Cedars so fat, so joyfull, all Hieroglyphicks of Gods mercy; when as the gates of Heaven (for ought we find here) were open to an offending multitude, and only shut against this handfull of the people: Thus God is pleased sometimes to decimate his male­factors, in paucos vindicta transit, in plures monitio, he sets up Lots Wife as a pil­lar [...], sayes the Scholiast, a Trophie to turn the hearts of the back­sliding generations: for as he is a fire to burn the chaff, so he is a fan to separate it from the purer wheat. When fawning Absolom had seduced the people to a great rebellion, promising a freer course of justice if he might raign, 'tis true a slaughter of the Israelites was made in the wood of Ephraim, but still the surviving rebels were suffered to return with David, whilst the justice of God contented it self with the head of Ab­solom, hanging now as his counsels formerly had done, between Heaven and Hell. But still as Meroz was but one place, yet a place it was, and a place very considerable: With great disadvantage must Deborah fight, when the villages about her were con­faederate with her enemies: Put case that God had defeated her before her enemy (as [Page 59]indeed [...], &c. A just cause does not alwayes inherit victory) what place was left to retreat to from the bloody Mountain? what refreshment could be given to the fainting Souldiers? What disheart­ning found the remoter tribes, when the place they marched to, for fresh supplies up­on occasion, proved the quarters of their enemies? As God gives to Men, so he ac­cepts from Men their opportunities: Re­hekah was known to be a fit wife for Isaac by her ready letting down her pitcher; and that soul that would be espoused to Christ, must discover it self by a seasonable and willing service. Yet mark, one step farther yet, together with the inhabitants, Meroz herself, the very fabrick bears a burthen in the curse. The Eagles nest is brought down from the Stars that the young ones may be de­stroyed: Oba. 4. Thus when by Gods per­mission the Israelites (accursed for one mans pillaging) found a repulse at the great City Aie, at the second assault Joshua contents not himself with the head of the ruler, or the throats of the Citizens, but makes the place it self a desolation. And this judg­ment God sends down sometimes upon the inanimate Creature, either because it hath been the instrument to occasion mans folly, or rather that his folly may be punisht by [Page 60]that judgment; that man may learn to groan for sin, by the Creaturs example, which grones under that punishment which is due to the sin of man: Well may the young Eagles cry when the ones sacriledg has fi­red the nest she builds in: 'tis the peoples sins begets the Cities curse: Thats the last part, the cause of this excommunication denounc'd, Curse ye Meroz (sayes the Angel) and her inhabitants, because they went not out, to help the Lord, to help the Lord against the mighty.

And indeed when God himself is gone up with a shout, and the Lord with the sound of the trumpet, he may curse himself that stayes behind: If it be true that God does pursue those whom he doth not ac­company, it is more true that he comes back upon those that do not accompany him. Gods cause is ours, in which if we will not bear a share, we shall surely bear the burthen. When the Reubenites and the Gadites, (whether tired out with their tedious march, or allured with the fatness of the plains of the Gileadites, or affrighted with their Brethrens reports of the enemies strength fron the valley of Eschol) were now grown lazy and neglected the portion of the other tribes, desiring, as they thought to sleep in a whole skin, and not to endan­ger [Page 61]themselves by passing over Jordan: See what a contestation Moses himself under­takes: Numb. 32. What a strife beget they in meekness! He which chid his own passi­ons before, now fell to reviling them: They were nigri Jovis incrementum, an in­crease of sinfull men, the fomentors of Gods anger: And accordingly was their re­ward: The first and greatest Giant Og, must be their task to tame; and the Gileadites once cleared, unless they will go armed before the Lord to warr and help their Brethren, intrench themselves as sure as they can, they shall never shut out a bosom enemy: there sins will find them out.

But stay; can God want help? will he, [...], sufficient of himself for Hea­ven and Earth, flie to man for succour, in whom there is no help? What new Ty­phoeus have we upon the Earth, which drives the Heavenly powers to the banks of Nile for refuge! Is not God [...] Almighty? Whose Lips are the fountains of power, at the breath of whose nostrils the infernall spirits tremble? and shall he want assistance against the mighty? Tis true; and yet he so disposes his affairs on Earth, That man may sometimes seem to get the upper hand: God works not all things by a miraculous power but lets [Page 62]out some part of his vineyard to the til­lage and husbandry of man; in which some­times, depopulatur aper, the wild boars have their lurking holes, and the little foxes have their boroughs: force or cunning have broken down their hedges. He sometimes permits a reviling Shimei in the face of Davids Army: a sacrelegious rout to deface his Sanctuary, and not bury them in the ru­ines which they make: a Jewish confedera­cy, which Turcisme would stand amazed at to recrucifie our Saviour in imagine, and hi­therto not payes them home with Judas his portion, to go hang themselves.

And these the all seeing eye of providence dispenses, whether the more surely to prove his friends, or the more fully to confound ene­mies. For the first, God hath a storehouse, from whence he could fil the hands of al his mem­bers yet leaves he some hungry, some thirsty, some naked, to see who would refresh them: Non quod te indiget, sed quod te [...]o indige­re cupit, he has no need of thee, but he de­sires that thou shouldest have need of him: What needed 32000 men of Israel gather­ed under Gideons standart, when 300 did the feat? But to try who would stand up for the Lord, and who will bow their knees to drink of the waters: who would adore the flowing Transitory pleasures here. 'Tis true [Page 63]in temporall as well as eternall salvation, qui te sine te fecit, te sine te non salvabit, he which created thee alone, requires thy own con­currence to thy preservation: nay by this means God pulls off the vizard from the face of Hypocrytes, unguilds their garnished fron­tlers, and leaves them as black as the sin they flatter with, If it had not been for Abso­loms rebellion, who could prove Achitophel Davids privy Counsellour had been a traitor? Who would have thought Amasa, honoured by David with the name of Cozen, one of his bone and of his flesh, would have ac­cepted of the generalship without Davids Commission? Who could believe that Jerusalem that Royall City, honoured with Davids Throne, not subsisting (as it seems) two Moneths without his pre­sence, would have gone up after Absa­lom? This is the Divine Eye of Wisdom which can produce sound fruit from such rot­ten stocks.

In the second there is the supream hand of power; when wicked designs prosper so happily that they are gathered into a head, till with one stroke God cuts them off: as Jehu serves the Priests of Baal 2 Kings 10: Pretends a solemn sacrifice, invites them with a full ceremony, cloaths them with the richest vestments, makes a holy day [Page 64]feast for Baals worshipers: The day was theirs, and the Prophets of God were look­ed upon as poor inferiour humble Crea­tures; but in the midst of their triumph, fourscore men made it end in a bloody sacrifice, they are all cut off, not one es­capes. The Servants of the houshold could have weeded out the tares, Mat. 13. But it was the Masters policy to let them grow ripe before he burnt them: They would make the greater blaze: God Almighty, I know, could have routed out the tares of heresie, the tares of sedition, which in these dayes of sin have almost overtopped the standing wheat: but (I perswade my self) out of mercy to his Church, he has let them grow to these licentious times, when every Son of Belial, dares openly dis­cover his untutor'd spirit, when we find more sects, then some years since we thought our Church had nourish'd Sectaries, that the sword of justice now knowing them, may make the surer & sharper stroke against them: Babels confusion had not been so remarke­able, but that the tower was raised so high as that it stood a pillar to after ages: The weakness of Deborahs forces and Jabins strength enlarge Gods honour: he gets a name by pulling down the mighty from their seat; but still he is sensible of the false heart­ed [Page 65]cowardise of the backsliding troops: He curses Merox and her inhabitants because they came not forth to help the Lord, to help the Lord against the mighty.

I have made hast, you see with, the plain-song of my text, that I may spend some time in the descant, in which every one of us must bear a part: And I cannot but begin with a just indignation against those who have abused the words and made them speak their own crazy humours, and frantick dreams. Like Men troubled with an Hydrophobia, bitten with a mad dog, and now raging, they think all things before them look like water, like the froth of their own brains: Indeed Scripture shall be no longer Scripture, if it do not please them: Being in this like the old Tyrians, who were wont to whip their Gods if they crossed them with a misfortune, till they made them better: Thus came they armed to the Pulpit with as brave a resolution as Hannibal to the Alps, aut viam invenient aut facient? Where they find no tracke before them they will adventure first; and are grown so daringly presumptuous as to slight these texts which, [...] do in plain rerms cross their trayterous position, and tell you it was doctrine fit for those times the Apostles lived in, (I my self have heard it) [Page 66]were they upon the Earth now, when Chri­stians knew their own strength, they would write in another strain. Blasphemous wretches! is the blessed Spirit of God a servant or the times; Is that eternal goodnesse [...], unchangeably constant, and for ever more the same, be­come the Idoll fortune, and dances he upon a wheel? Never Musselman thought thus of his lawgiver Mahomet, never Heathen of the rule of Nature. Yet that they may shew some commixture of madness and wit, some­times they will prove ingeniously wicked, and like a conjurer cast a mist before your eyes, till you think you see the face of these times presented you in the glass of prophe­sie: which (once perswaded) what ever language came from the top of Ebal, is a Charientismus, a message of peace compared with theirs: Thus Deborah the Church shall fall a cursing Meroz the friends to the crown because they came not out to help the Lord against Siseras host the royall Army. [...]: Here lets joyn hands: Good sirs instruct me: whose person bore distressed Deborah? was it not the supream? and are there, or can there be 2. supreams? She was a Mother, a Judg, a Captain in Israel: And can any order that is a primo primus derived from the first be equall to it? [Page 67]Had Jabin been a King to Deborah I am sure she had too religious a soul to have cursed him: For what was Sisera? Was he not a stranger? One of another line, another claim, another religion, another God? one commanded by God long since to be expeld the Land, and his inheritance devided a­mongst the Tribes? Make you your selves an Analogy between the stories, and see what an apt proportion they have left. But one nice distinction will stop this gap: We can cut an hair between the King and his forces. The King is a good King, a well meaning King (and so he is in spite of their bold faced detractions) but his Siseras, his Generals, his Commanders, they are none of ours: No, and yet within these three years, the reverend Fathers of our Church were quarreld at by these very Men for leaving their names out of our divine ser­vice book. But are we grown such experi­enced artificers to devide between the squir­rel and the tail that hides the back? The fable makes a pretty dialogue between the wolf and the dog: The wolf bids him go home and sleep quietly, why should he ex­pose himself to the winters frosts, and the summers heat, to watch his flock? There was no emnity between them: true (sayes the dog) but when thou hast worried my [Page 68]sheep and art grown fat and lusty with their flesh, thou maist seize upon my throat next.

But closer yet: for I would faine follow my text, however they leave it: Neither has the Angel said it to them, nor have they power to curse, nor have they cutsed Meroz, nor curse they for not helping of the Lord: nor (in their sense) does the Lord need any help against the mighty.

First an Angel has not said it: whatever visions they pretend: or if he should, though an Angel from Heaven deliver any other doctrine then what the Scripture has preached let him be accursed: I Gal. I. the Divine revelations and Angelicall descenti­ons which the Anabaptists glory of, are things grown too naked to delude us any longer: They sound like the story of Mahomets dove. Since Christs ascension into Heaven he left the holy Spirit as a Legacy to his Church; that Spirit which shall guide it into all truth; and so it will, not­withstanding all these impostures: When their writings are ad thus & scombros alligata, made as they are, wastpaper: St. Peter and St. Paul will be true and sound divinity: And yet I know tis no new thing for Satan to transform himself into an Angel of light, and become a lying Spirit in the [Page 67]mouths of such as would be accounted Prophets: We know when he perswaded a Nation to go to warr to its own destructi­on: May our good God defend us from the like mischief.

But 2ly. they have no power to curse, no commission for their execrations: a Christi­ans office is [...] Rom. 12.10. speak friendly to their persecutors: Marke the phrase, [...], well to them, and well of them too, not pump hell for language and arme the tongue with such Rhetorick that it cutteth like a razor. The word [...] which the Septuagint uses here for cursing, signifies pray ye barkward: (if ye will:) for so the Scholiast tels me that [...] the theme in Homers time signified humble prayers; but being abused in the succeeding ages who turned their prayers, into curses, the interpretation of the word changed too and it signifide an execration: and indeed in this art of pray­ing backward we are too good proficients: If that be to pray we can learn our lessons quickly: By the abuse of time it comes that we have changed the genuine meaning of the word. For in the dayes of old, before Religion was adulterated, the reverend Fa­thers in the primitive times were wont to bless the patience of Christian Souldiers: bless them for their loyalty, bless them for their [Page 70]service performed to their most cruel blood­sucking persecutors: When they behaved themselves like the stoutest Champions in the causes of the Emperors, they were in­couraged with an Euge sic decet Christianos you shew now that yee serve the Lord of Heaven, by obeying his vice-roys upon earth. But alas the ditty is chang'd in our dayes: if any true hearted piety dare be so bold as to stand in the just defence of that Soveraignty, which the law of God, the laws of Nations our oathes and protestations binds us to, there is an Ito maledicta passed upon it, it is cursed and cursed bitterly. But though they curse yet God will blesse: It is not the name malignant can exclude us out of the Church triumphant, if in a true cause we are here militant.

Thirdly it is not Meroz, any poor little Villages they curse: tales aquilae muscas non capiunt: but Tabor and Hermon the Mounts of God, the hills of Learning: God knows our Meroz's our Countrey parishes are infa­tuated with a bayard blindnesse, they will neither see nor yet believe they are blind: Chyrurgions tell us no such sure sign of death as a senselesse Apathy, when we feel not the smarting of our wounds: Thus where our State is wounded, in the head, the seat of judgment, wounded in the heart, [Page 71]the seat of life, wounded in the hands, the execution of justice, wounded in the feet, the interpretation of those laws, on whose bottom the Kingdom stands, we as if we were bitten with a Tarantula, shall laugh our selves to death in the midst of these di­stractions, and only be grieved at yesterdays ache, and take physick for that disease which had seazed and left us three years a­goe. And this was the very case of the Is­raelites in the great defection from Rhehobo­am, the complaint was oppression by his Father Solomon, whose dayes indeed was golden dayes, the very stones of the street which the people trampled on, were outvyed (in their number almost) by others far more pretious: But crafty Rhe­haboam galling their mindes first and then finding when it pinched, he scarrifies first, Remonstrates to the people the greivous Yoke the King had thrown upon them, and then applies an itching plaister: he would ease them of the trouble to go up to worship at the Mother Church at Jerusalem, he knew if the doors of the Sanctuary were o­pen, the law of God read there, would keep the people in subjection, 1 Kings 12.17. There­fore he will lock them up if he can, and pretend the peoples ease: it is too much for them to go up thither, especially since [Page 72]they have made Calves at their own homes: what need a Church when the highwayes of Dan and Bethel will serve the turne? Thus when he had cheated them into a civill war, they run madly to their own confusion, con­tinually weakning the powers of one ano­ther till the forreign Assyrian enemy seized on both. Under which captivity, ten revolt­ing tribes lost both their names and beings: If in the mean time a Prophet come with a message from the Lord to reduce these wan­dring sheep, and bring them home to their forsaken folds, Jeroboam presently stretches out his hand against him; and if a miraculous power from heaven do not whither it, that hand will lay him fast. 'Tis reported of Julian that Enemy of Christia­nity, that although he himself was an able Clerk, yet he hated and forbade all learning in others, left they should detect his cun­ning fallacies: The comparison I know is very odious, and yet I fear me we shall finde in our dayes more barbarism: Meroz, cursing Tabor: When the people have broken off their golden earings for their calf, Aaron himself shall be threatned, if he will not dance about it. Nay further yet; foolish, ignorant, lying Zedekiah shall have leave to smite Micaiah on the face if he presume to be so honest to diswade his Countrimen from [Page 73]a warr, and prevail so far with those that are in power as to clap him up in prison: God quit England from Jerusalems sins of stoning those which are sent unto her.

But fourthly, their curses come not for not helping the Lord. Unlesse they could perswade us there are two Gods in Heaven, as they would make two faiths and more then two baptismes upon the Earth: For was ever the cause of God set up by lying? Lying, so palpable, so notorious that Bel­larmines piae frauds were religious, if compa­red with it: every week being a Cretian Mart where the Devill sends us in impressions by the whole sale, which may teach the next Generation how voluminously wicked their Fathers were; Was ever Gods cause set up by oppression? Cruel, inhuman, barba­rous oppression, where one subject shall be armed with power to kill another. Whilst the mouth of the Laws are stop'd and they outroad by Ordinances: Where every dis­contented Country boor shall challenge an Equall share in his Neighbours goods, and fall a plundering by the liberty of the Subject: Liberty! Licence let us rather call it, licence qua deteriores sumus, an a­buse of licence which makes us worse. Was ever Gods cause set up by Blasphemy? Most execrable deep mouth'd blasphemy, [Page 74]which a sober Christian would be afraid to hear, least the Divel should be in pre­sence: Some daring in the Pulpits (which I my self have heard) tell Almighty God, that if he deserted this cause he would loose his honour, none would e­ver call upon his name again. Others professing in that sacred place, if this cause failed they should turne Atheists, as I think they are already: I will not tell all, you hear too much allready. Oh Sirs, we are cheated of our Religion: The mo­dester Papists have rob'd us of some of the choycest of our Refined Doctrine whilst we are degenerated into the dregs of Jesuitisme: Shall they make proffers of their service to hazerd their lives and for­tunes in the just defence of a good Prince, which notwithstanding hates their Religion although he cherishes their subjection? and shall we unchristianly imagine that we help the Lord by destroying the Lords Anointed? The Giants may as well say they raised those mountains for bulwarks to defend the hea­vens from whence they meant to scale them: Judas may as well say he had given his Ma­ster a kiss of courtesie when he brought out men with swords and staves to secure him. Horrour and amazement keeps in the rest.

Lastly in their sense (I say) God ha's needed no help against the mighty. For com­pare Deborahs Estate to Siseras, and make an equall reference in all to our own Nation and see who might properly be called the mighty: Deborah was under a palm tree in the high way, whilst Sisera dwelt in Haro­sheth. You may all remember the time when his sacred Majesty was first driven to these parts, when (except his goodness) there was nothing about him like a Prince, whe­ther you look upon his retinue, or his pro­vision or the homage of his vicegerents as he passed: all so much inferior to his Estate, that had those beheld it, which could have wisht it meaner, I perswade my self, they would have pitied it: under the burden of which humility he must needs have faln, if his heart had not proved like Deborahs palm tree: grown higher with depressing. Sisera at this time abounding with all pro­vision, Deborah seeks out for succour to en­counter him: but those as you heard come in very slowly and unarmed: her enemy had made a party in those Tribes she trusted to. When the necessity of a warr was made (which God knowes was most un­welcome news to the religious heart of our pious Soveraign) (witness those several condescentions to almost unequal termes of [Page 76]peace, as would make a marble heart thaw to tears, that reads them) think but with what difficulty he raised up any forces, re­member what opposition he found in pre­paring a guard for his royal person, (indeed he needed none he had a guard of Angels,) that being quarreld at for him in an open Country, which his Courts of Justice thought necessary for themselves in the greatest place of security: I should distrust your judgments to remember you of Dans ships or Ashers coast Towns, Reubens divisi­ons or Gileads confaederacy: What ever the wit of man could invent, to stop supplies by sea or land, of monyes, or men, or ammunition, what ever disheartning could be thrown upon his well affected subjects; what ever opposition could be made by an association, entred between Geball and Am­mon and Ameleck the Phylistines, and those that dwell at Tire, all these and more then these he incountred with: But non est consi­lium contra altissimum: In the day of battle Deborah wins the field: wonder not if the power of Heaven prevail Against the arme of flesh: Though his excellency reach unto the Heavens and his head mount up to the clouds yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung, Job. 20.6. Mount Tabor can tell you, and so can rebellious Meroz too, how succesfull [Page 77]those Northern troops have been, which God rais'd up as a pledg of his providence over his anointed, which all that look upon impartial­ly, must needs conclude with an hic Dei digi­tus: This is the hand of Heaven which has de­fended the Lord of the earth Against the mihgty.

But I haue cut out these so large a share in my text that I have kept for our selves but a very small division: What ever remains two words shall dispatch, 1. Imprecemur, 2. Deprecemur: let us curse, and let us pray: Curse those that have deserved it, pray that we may not deserve it. Imprecemur first: Curse if not with Deborah, Meroz there for not helping the Lord yet with St. Paul Meroz here for fighting against the Lord: In denoun­cing which sentence I clash not with the doctrine I have delivered. There is an E­vangelicall curse for all such coyned to my hands, and that the deepest of all other, no less then damnation. Whosoever resists shall receive to himself damnation Rom. 13. Had we the art of opening our bibles, and reading there, as well as wearing them un­der our armes, which we love so well, we had been taught this divinity from as many plain texts as there are found to confirm any Article of the Creed: But a seeming devo­tion is no new vizor. Horace tells us of the light wenches in his dayes, that Libellos sto­icos [Page 78]jacere inter sericos pulvillos amant: they would not go to bed, but their grave trea­tises of chastity must be their pillows: pro­fession I know is very good, but it is when the hearts and lips are friends: But if we walk not honestly toward them which are without, we teach Turks and Mahumetans to blas­pheme our God, and whereas their religion is their shame, we prove a shame to our re­ligon. For consider I beseech you, and con­sider seriously against whom ye would take up armes? Is it not against the power, against the ordinance of God? Contra animatam Dei Imaginem, against the walking picture of Heaven? In Kings, sayes Lactantius, there is a double appearance: they are Men before God but they are Gods before Men: Such (sayes Optatus) as acknowledg no power to controul them, but him alone which instated them in such power: And who that is Tertullian will tell you elegantly: Inde Imperator, unde & homo antequam Imperator, inde potestas illi & spiritus: St. Pauls words shall interpret him, there is no power but what is ordained of God. Which strook good St. Bernard to so brave are resolution, that maugre the confe­deracy of the world, he would prove himself a Christian to God by a loyal subjection to his Soveraign: his words deserve letters of Gold in his 170. Epistle. Si totus orbis [Page 79](sayes he) adversumme conjuraret, ut quip­piam molirer adversus regiam Majestatem ego tamen Deum timerem, & ordinatum adeo Regem offendere temere non auderem. And he gives his reason: Nec enim ignoro ubi legerim qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit. See how vast a difference here is between our Spirits: Religious soul! the whole earth combining could not make him willingly offend his King: and shall the fear of a threatned plundering make us oppose our King? Alas Sirs, those that we fear for the thorns to wound us, should be the spurs to incite us: Do their worst it is the best for us: they can but rob us of our intanglings, as The­ophilact glosses upon 2 Tim. 2. [...] Some Serpents that imbrace us, and hinder us from pleasing him who has called us to be Souldi­ers: shall we embrace a little nick named favour here, before the Eternal love of God? shall the common rout perswade me to go to Hell for company? If the name of Christian be not worn out with some newborn title for which we have exchanged it, think what our Captain hath done before us: He curses Peters sword, which was drawn in defence of him his Lord and Master, and when the judg of Heaven & earth stood before the bar of Caesar, to be adjudged, he confesses himself to the author of that power which spoke [Page 80]his own condemnation. 'Tis truely said that Kings have long arms, they can reach to heaven for vengeance, they can crow'd down to hell for torments: And this is true of all Kings, Christians, or Heathen good or bad: not only of the Vespasians the sweet governours, but of Domitian the cruel Ty­rant, of Nero, of Tyberius, that [...], (as his Master Gadareus called him) that heap of morter tempered with blood. The Oyl upon Sauls head saved his throat (sayes Optatus.) He was a wicked King, it is true, and deserved to dy, but David was a good man, and durst not be his executioner, dum timuit olenm servavit inimicum; the oyl with which he was anointed, David well knew would never sink, but in despight of violence would swim uppermost. 'Tis true that God sometimes refines his Church in the furnace of perfection, neither then does he leave it naked and disarme it. But what are the Churches weapons? St. Anselm had his dolere potero, potero flere, his sighs and groans against the Gottish Soul­diers: St. Bernard fought to death against Lewes of France, non scutis & gladiis, sed precibus & fletibus, prayers and tears were his sword and buckler, Nazianzen overcame Julian but it was Christianorum lachrymis ubertim effusis, by softning his [Page 81]Adamantine heart with salt drops from their eyes: Thence flowes the only sea which can overthrow Pharoahs host. But alas! this is not our case: We prepare other armes against a Prince of another temper: One, whom if the first Christians had known they would have made him more then the delight of Men, they would receive him as an Angel of God. A Prince of so gratious a disposition, that the gratest fear his good subjects have to loose him, is because he is too good for Earth. One which lingers for peace in the greatest success of war: One which has hoped to win by loosing, and has willingly made himself less a King, if by that means he might make us more subjects: One which calls out for mercy in the field of blood: ye stones hear this and melt! for­bidding the slaughter of those which they can take prisoners, notwithstanding they came out to be his executioners. Groaning for our wants, our infringed Liberties, our de­cayed religion, which now lay expiring, but that the soul of it has found a warme seat in his royal breast. A true Cedar of Mount Lebanon that hath afforded a secure shelter to the humble vallies: and never, O never may he be cut down, till he be removed to the building of the Heavenly Sanctuary: As for those trees that would have the bramble [Page 82]raign, let them be consumed by the bram­bles curse, and be burnt up with the fire which the bramble kindles. But I have for­got my self:

2. Deprecemur, The great God of Hea­ven remove this curse from us, for let us no longer flatter our selves, Brethren, with a superficiall Allegiance: have we been as zealous for God and the King as our duty binds us? have our Eliahs cried as loud, have they rent and cut themselves as much as Baals lying Prophets? Has not the fear of Daniels den, the place where the Kings Lions were kept, and Jeremiahs dun­geon stopped the mouths of our Men of God? Did not Deborah here find better aid from Zebulon, of those that handle the writers pen? whereas, after the groaning of the press vvith seditious Pamphlets, our gracious Soveraign makes a just complaint that all pens are silent in his righteous cause: If he do gladio protegere, shall not we calamo defendere? If his sword rights our cause, shall not our quils write his? He that fights for Heaven and us, shall not our prayers fight with Heaven and wrastle with Almighty God for him? Shall a little of Demosthenes his gold, send the sqinzy in our throats? Shall a politick silence stop our Mouths? For, good Sirs, what should you fear; the losse of your [Page 83] Estates? Alas, if you let fall this cause, who can challenge a propriety? 'Twill be in vain to preach a non concupisces, thou shalt not wish, when a vote turnes you out of all nerutis caesis receptis? Do you fear the losse of Liberty? Was it ever more infringed? Do you fear the losse of Religion? I, here indeed it pinches: We have betrayed the cause Amyclaeo filentio, whilst we durst not tell you, the enemy was a coming: They have taken away the Lord, and we know not where they have laid him: Nay they have not left so much as the white cloaths in the place where he lay before: They have defaced the Sanctuary, and yet we the Nehemiahs, the Eliashibs, the Priests and Labourers, have taken neither a sword in one hand to defend it, nor a trowell in the other to repair it. God be mercifull unto our sin, for it is great, we have not holpen the Lord Against the might.

But the King shall rejoyce in thy Strength, O Lord; exceeding glad shall he be in thy Salva­tion. Thou shalt give him his hearts desire; and wilt not deny him the request of his lips. For thou shalt prevent him with the blessings of good­ness; and shalt set a crown of pure gold upon his head. His honour shall be great in thy Sal­vation; glory and great worship shalt thou lay upon him. For thou shalt give him everlasting felicity; and make him glad with the joy of thy [Page 84]countenance. And why, because the King putteth his trust in the Lord; and in the mercy of the most Highest he shall not miscarry. All thine enemies shall feel thy hand; thy right hand shall find out them that hate thee. Thou shalt make them like a fiery oven in the time of thy wrath; the Lord shall destroy them in his displeasure, and the fire shall consume them. Their fruit shalt thou root out of the Earth, and their seed from among the Children of men. For they intended mischief against thee, and imagined such a device as they shall not be able to perform. Therefore shalt thou put them to flight; and the strings of thy bow shalt thou make ready against the face of them. Be thou exalted Lord in thine own strength, so will we sing and praise thy power.

Amen, Amen.

THen it appears that time was when Aaron had a rod; and that rod budded too, yes and it budded in the Tabernacle, and was laid up in the Ark of the Covenant to be kept for a token against the Rebels in the latter dayes, verse 10. And may not we fear that those lat­ter dayes are faln upon us, when Aarons rod is now broken, and he himself scarce suffered to enter into the Tabernacle? Whilst an Antichristian brood, sit in the Temple of God which exalt themselves above all that is called God. The Author to the He­brews, chap. 9. tells us of three sacra deposi­ta, holy Utensils laid up in the Ark toge­ther, the pot of Manna, the Tables of the Covenant, and this budding rod: and there they kept company so long, that now they [Page 88]will not be parted. Let one be banisht and all the rest (we may fear) will follow: Once break the Crosier, this pastorall rod, and the Tables of the Covenant, the ten Com­mendements are not long liv'd after it: They shall be banisht out of the Church by sacri­legious deformers, & out of the heart by im­pious Antinomians; and the pot of Manna, the heavenly bread of holy doctrine, shall be poysoned with the Coloquintida of errors mixt amongst it: there will be mors in olla, till some Elisha poure in meal, better ground, better sifted principles, there is death in the pot. Doctrine and Discipline like Hippocra­tes twins will alwayes either laugh or cry to­gether.

The words read may be called Gods lottery; the lots are rods, the bag they are put in is the Tabernacle, the hand that drew them out is the hand of Moses, the house they fall on is the house of Levi. Or more plainly, it is Gods miraculous preferring the house of Levi and Aaron most eminently of all that Tribe; before the mutinying Congregation: They depend upon the foregoing History, and I should handle them very partially; if I did not preface them with it.

When the Levite Cora [...] thought himself undervalued, that he was only separated from the Congregation to do the service of [Page 89]the Tabernacle and to Minister to the peo­ple; esteeming it but a small thing that the Lord had thus brought him neer unto himself (indeed his ambitious heart, kept him at far distance) when the Priesthood was intayl'd on Aaron and his Successors: he joynes himself to Dathan and Abiram, two ruling Elders of the Tribe of Reuben with two hun­dred and fifty Princes of the Assembly, and there begins to preach parity, a doctrine ea­sily disgested by ambitious minds to this In­dependent Congregation. A pretence of ho­linesse cloaked their wickednesse: For be­ing gathered into a riot and daring do all acts of violence which their strength could secure them in, they exclaim against their governours, you take too much upon you, say they, seeing all the Congregation are holy and the Lord is amongst them: Wherefore then lift yee up your selves above the Congr [...]gation of the Lord? A strange presumption which the mad World will never leave, to entitle God to the Divels cause, to bring the Lord of Order to countenance their disorders: but these unhappy dayes hath left the story at our own doors; where a specious outside guilds many rotten Hypocrites: Sampsons two foxes cannot be coupled with a fire­brand of Sedition between them, but they be reported abroad to draw the yoke of Jes [...]s [Page 90]Christ: under a pretence of Every one is holy, a parity in righteousnes, every one strives for a primacy, a supremacy in wickedness. And it were well if these thrusts were made a­gainst Aaron the high priests breast plate only, Moses his rod is beaten down too. The Miter cannot fall but the Crown shakes; they that made Religion their qnarrel just before, presently after make politicall grieveances the burden of the song. Moses like a good Prince had taken off the envy from his High-Priest Aaron, and pointed their arrows at an higher mark: you are gathered against the Lord, sayes he, (and indeed Sirs God is in all his ordi­nances) but what is Aaron that yee murmur a­gainst him? Yet let his next work be, to se­cure himself: Is it a small thing (say they) that thou hast brought us out of a Land that flow­eth with milk and honey to kill us in the wilder­ness, except thou make thy self a Prince altoge­ther over us? This strong complaint of Ty­ranny was the most forcible cord that could unite the hands of the many-headed-mon­ster-multitude. But the next verse tells us it was their own particular interests which ingaged the Rebells, it was because they had not Fields and Vineyards to their hearts desire. Absolom may flatter the people in the gate, and pitty their case that justice is delayed them, but let his heart comment upon his [Page 91]words, and he pitties most his own case, that he is not in place to do it. But Moses can easily wash his hands of Tyranny: I have not taken ass from them, neither have I hurt one of them, sayes he. The complaint of Rebels most commonly is as far removed from truth as their quarrell is from goodness: Yet un­less God from Heaven will attest his inte­grity, his own righteousnesse will scarce de­fend him against two hundred and fifty as­sembly men. Moses and Aaron fall upon their faces, but the Lord holds them up; and at their command the Congregation se­parates from the tents of Corah and his Confederates, who would have made them Separatists from the Congregation: Whilst those mutinying Traytors which did not de­serve to live, are not suffered to dye, but are buryed before their death, and they which would have made a division from their Fathers may not be gathered to their Fathers in peace: But the earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up, they and all that appertained to them went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed upon them, and they perished from amongst the Congregation. As for the other 250 with censers in their [...]nds which would be flashing of strange fire be­fore the Lord, God sends down a true fire from Heaven which eats them up: Two pa­rarell [Page 92]judgments: A Schisme of the Earth punisheth a Schism of the People; a fire from Heaven consumes their ignis fatuus, their false fire upon the Earth; so surely does God overtake those which do not carry him along with them in their designs.

By this time we would think that an aw­ful reverence of Moses & Aaron was wrought upon the hearts of the Congregation by the finger of heaven: but seditious minds are restlesse: Like Sisyphus his stone, if it be faln to the bottom, it must be rold to the top of the hill again: The People fly from the gaping of the Earth, and are afraid of the fire from Heaven, but having digested their Panick fears, next morning (like men hardened to their destruction) they dare challenge God to renew his judgments, by charging his Magistrates with the blood of those which perished in their own rebellion; as if Moses his rod which before had devoured the Egyptian mock-Serpents, had now feast­ed upon the Rulers of the assembly, and Aa­rons blue, and purple, and scarlet, were now al­together dyed in blood; ye have killed (say they) the people of the Lord.

But unless those whom they accuse for their Murtherers prove their deliverers they are all but dead men for there is wrath gone out against them: Aaron at Moses his command [Page 93]runs into midst of the Congregation, takes the censer, puts fire upon the censer, puts on incense, and stands between the living and the dead, and makes atonement for the People: The mercy of a good Governour resembles God from whom he has his Commission: he is ready to spare and protect them that con­spire his destruction: knowing that his Sa­viour dyed for them which crucified him; yet least the death of fourteen thousand and seven hundred should in the next Generati­on be worn out and forgoten, God will per­petuate this story with a lasting miracle, and that the mouthes of murmerers may for ever be stop'd he makes choise of Aaron symbolical­ly: the twelve Princes of the twelve Tribes cast in their twelve rods, as Moses appointed, with their names wrote every man upon his rod: and on the morrow Moses went into the Sanctuary of the Wit­ness, and behold the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi budded and bloomed blossomes and brought forth Almonds.

In prosecuting these words, Aquinas his rule shall be our guide: In omni Scripturae narratione historica (sayes he) profundamen­to tenenda est veritas historiae, & de super spi­rituales rationes sunt fabricondae: in any histo­cal narrative part of Scripture, the first prin­ciple which we must ground upon is the truth of the history, and that foundation [Page 94]once laid we make our mystical, spirituall interpretations, a super-structure. Give me leave hear then to make Aaron another coat and to imbroyder over the fine linnen, the groundwork of the history, with the Blew, and Purple, and Scarlet, and Gold, the several colours of the mystery. Observe we then in this miraculous Election of Al­mighty God, the subject on which the mi­racle was wrought, which falls under our notice, 1. In the simple, it was a rod, 2. The composit it, was Aarons rod, 3. The de­composit, it was Aarons rod for the house of Le­vi, Secondly, the miracle it self, branched out in 3, decrees: This rod at Aaron for the house of Levi, 1. Brought foorth buds, 2. Bloomed bosome, 3. Yielded almonds: Thirdly the circumstances of time and place, like two Servants to attend upon it. It was on the morrow, In the Sanctuary: These are the sta­ges thorough which we shall drive in this hours discourse, which will hardly affoord us time to bait in them, but only with a run­ning eye to overlook them.

The subject of this miracle first was a rod, and this was chosen of God before any o­ther, as the most proper the most signifi­cant: Indeed if we look upon things with a superficial eye, there was nothing belonging to the high Priest which did not promise [Page 95]more, and might not better prove Aarons preheminence. His very garments which God prescribed Exod. 28. to be made glori­ous and beautifull like Josephs imbroidered coat, might have taught his Brtheren that he was his Fathers darling: Or the Urim and the Thummim, and the stones of his breastplate which afterwards delivered those divinations to the people, might have proved their own Oracles, and witnessed their praeferment. Or the golden bels upon the verge of his garment might have challenged that honour which is promised to the bells of the Horses, Zach. 14.20. to be superscribed, Holiness to the Lord. But ratio divina in medulla est non in superficie: It is not the glorious outside which God regards: That Almighty power which chooses the weak things of the World to confound the mighty, and sayes unto the dead bones, live, takes here a sapless sere stick, without either root or branch for a Scepter at the exaltation of his anoynted; and that which before was the instrument of working many miracles is now become the subject matter upon which a miracle is wrought. And this was most ap­posite to Gods intent and purpose in four re­spects: 1. as it is symbolum potestatis a rod to rule and govern them: 2. As it is symbolum correctio­nis, a rod to correct and scourge them, 3. As it is symbolum instructionis a rod to guide and in­struct [Page 96]them, 4. As it is symbolum sustentati­onis, a rod to support and comfort them: Power, Correction, Instruction, Sustentation, are the four pinacles of Aarons Tower, which make him lift up his head above his fellows.

1. As a Rod of power. For of old the Priesthood was not fetterd nor Aarons hands bound behind him: If we look to his first election. Exod. 4.16. We shall finde he was made Lord Chancellour to Moses amongst the Israelites: He shall be thy spokesman unto the people saith the Lord: Afterwards he and his sons were oftentimes the Lords high Stewards, which executed judgment upon the offenders. And when Moses was called up to Mount Sinai to talk with God, Aaron and Hur were made the Lords high Constables to govern the people in his absence. I deny not but that there was a Subordination of Power: the Crosier gave place to the Scepter: Aarons rod submitted to Moses. For in the fore-quoted place. Exod. 4. Where the Priest was made the Princes mouth, the Prince was made the Priests God. He shall be as thy mouth and thou shall be to him as God. As for that high Priest now a dayes which proves himself the Man of sin by ex­alting himself above all that is called God, he had need build upon a firmer foundation [Page 97]then the Sandy Clementines, or their false Glosses: otherwise their honour will fall into the dust: Because the vision bids Pe­ter, arise, kill and eat, therefore the Pope may depose Princes: because Malchus, which being interpreted a King, was servant to the High Priest, therefore Kings were the Popes servants. You may well question whi­ther these arguments had their rises from the Brains or the Gutts of the Friers. And truly we need not wonder to see those Mountains are brought low and level'd, if we do but consider that the pride of the Clergy hath been caution enough to Prince and People to look about them: that that Crosier has not been used as a Pastoral staff to catch the Sheep but to hook away the Crown, and Aarons Rod is turned to a Scepter of iron, to crush the Kings of the Earth in pieces. Yet a lawful subordinate power they have dele­gated from God himself: yes, and that in Temporals too, however the policie of our State of late hath thought it otherwise con­venient. For to omit the story of Judas Maccabeus, who in the time of the Captivity of their Kings governed the people; we shall find Phineas the Grand-son of Aaron in the next generation executing this Authori­ty, who as a Priest the son of Eleazar, and as a Prince of the Congregation did judgment [Page 98]upon Zimri and Cozbi, the idolatrous adulte­rers; And it is worth your observing how the Psalmist recording this story, Psalm 106. makes choice of a word of double significati­on, to imply his double capacity; the word is Palal, which signifies either to pray or to exe­cute judgment, verse 30. Phineas stood up and prayed, or Phineas stood up & executed judgment: denoting not only the connaturality of these two, that executing judgment is a kind of pray­er or sacrifice to God, but likewise their compe­tibility to the same subject, that executing judg­ment is as proper an office of the Priest as pray­er it self: And thus is Aarons a rod of power.

But 2. as of power so of correction too and in­deed the first patronises the second: his power enables him for correction. By correction, I mean not a corporal scourging or whipping of the people, as the disciplining Friers use upon themselves and others upon their pennance­dayes; Arons rod had no whipcord at the end of it: but a more piercing lash circa potiorem partem, such arrows which David speaks of which enter into the soul: It is a tradatur Satanae, a shutting them out of the Congregation, and a banishing them from the camp of Israel. To this purpose, Levit. 13. God gives the Priests marks & tokens to discover the leprous party, & to make a difference between the clean & un­clean, and those marks once found out, it is not [Page 99] Nobility of blood or greatness of power can secure the Leper or keep him within the pale: The crown on Uzzias head cannot hide the Leprosie on his brow, but Azariah the Priest will cast him out. 2 Chro. 26. Indeed if there be Livor in oculis Pontificis, malice in the Priests eye, which discolours all he looks upon, and makes the most clear object seem full of leprous spots, their casting out proves but brutum fulmen, potguns which make a crack but cannot wound: As the blind man newly recovered to his sight by our Sa­viour in the Gospel, because he saw more then the high Priest, was ejected: Indeed they threw him out of the Church that he might be neerer God. But when it is done, clave non errante, with an unerring judgment: pronounced on those markes which God has set: he is polluted, he is unclean, let 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 [Page 100]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 [Page 101]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 [Page 102]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 [Page 103]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 twas 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 reg­ [...]o, a bare Soveraignty over naked Men [Page 104]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 of their re­bellion: That so long as the altar has a being, Men may learn from thence, that no Man may take that honour to himself, but he that was [Page 105]called of God, as was Aaron: 5 Heb. 4. And sure the love of God was such that he would choose none but the best of Govern­ments for his Church; Had all the Princes of the tribe of Levi had an equall share, they by an Aristocrasy would have bred an emula­tion; had all the People injoyed a parity, their Democrasie would have brought in confusion; but exalting Aaron in the high Priests chair, and disposing of the rest in sub­ordinate offices under him, God maintain­ed so blessed a Harmony in his Church, as that it was an imperfect shadow of that bles­sed Harmony in heaven.

But 3. It was Aarons rod for the house of Levi upon whom the priesthood was en­tailed. The Reubenites thought they had a fair plea for it, because they were the first born of their Father Jacob: and the other tribes wished well toward it, witness the rods which every tribe put into the lottery, in hopes it might be taken. But God which is constant to all his purposes had chosen Levi of all the Tribes of Israel, to be his Priest: as the Man of God testifies 1 Sam. 2.28. To offer upon his altar and to burn incense before him. And it is well that this honour was once esteemed so great, that all the tribes were ambitious of it. When the E­phod and the imbroydered coat were esteem­ed [Page 106]glorious: The dregs of Jeroboams cor­ruptions have a greater influence upon our times, who made Priests of the lowest of the people; and when God requires the most comely bodies and proportionable counte­nances for his service; If any by nature be made so decrepit, that he be unfit for any other imployment he will come and crouch and say, put me into the Priests office, that I may eat a morsel of bread. Yet this Act of God which made the Priesthood Levi's im­propriation, as it debars others from affecting of it, witness the destruction of the Reube­nites, Dathan, Abiram and their Confederates, or so much as intermedling with it, vvhich cost poor Uzziah dear, 2 Sam. 6.7, Who going to uphold the arke, vvas smitten down, so neither does it priviledge the Levites themselves to perform his service after their ovvn fancy: If Aarons own sons Nahab and Abihu shall presume to offer up any o­ther fire then that which descended from Heaven upon Gods Altar, that fire which should consume their sacrifices shall devour themselves. The service of the Sanctuary must be intire: It will admit of no Mecha­nicks to officiate, nor yet must the fiery zeal of Clergymen themselves coyne any new fangled formes of services and worship which God has not prescribed. Both are [Page 107]enemies to Aarons rod here; for as the one break it in pieces or steal it away, and clap their own in the room, so the other bow it to their humor and make it crooked after their own fancy.

Hitherto we have beheld the rod wither­ed and dead: let us now consider it in the miracle and see what fruit it bears, which is branched in 3. degrees, it budded, it blossom­ed, it brought forth Almonds.

Every tribe in Israel, had provided his rod, and every rod was strip'd alike, and had the name of the Prince of the tribe ingraven on it, Aarons rod had no more sap in it, no more earth about it. Onely it had Aarons name upon it: Where God has made a secret choice, he will make an open difference. They go to the wrong end of the ladder which climb up into Gods breast first, and there trace out those unsearchable points of his e­lection, and from thence ground themselves upon their impossibility of barrennesse and fal­ling off, and by consequence, their necessity of budding and blossoming and bearing fruit. Would such a course as this have comforted Aaron, or satisfied the other tribes? What difference between a Log and a Tree before it spring again? But then is salvation sure when you work it out: Then faith is alive when it is manifested by its works: Then [Page 108]is Aaron declared to be Gods chosen when his rod quickens.

And quicken it must or else he cannot be the chosen of God. No surer token of the life of grace then fruitfulness. Barrenness was banished at the first creation out of his gar­den of the World. Increase and multiply, says he, to all his creatures, and if any fall short cut it down, why combreth it the ground: And he that is not marr'd by the Divel, is always thus increasing: he is alwayes going forward either budding new or ripening his last blos­som'd fruit. It was a curse laid upon avarice Esaiah 5.10. that ten acres of Vines should yeild but one bath, and the seed of an Homer should yeild but an Ephah, but one part for ten: sure that is an incumbrance not a crop; and those Vines are fitter for winters fire then summers vintage.

Nor yet will standing still in the same condition, serve the turne, (as they say an Oak will for an hundred years together.) Tis a true saying in Divinity, qui Deo non progreditur, regreditur, he that goes not for­ward to God, goes backward to the Devill: It was no excuse to the idle servant, that had hid his talent, although he had buried it up for fear of losing 'ont, and put it in a nap­kin for fear of rusting of it: It was taken from him, for his negligence, he had gain­ed [Page 109]nothing to it. Yet who is there here pre­sent, that cannot strike upon his heart and say, Lord, I am in a worse condition? He was idle, I am sinfull. He hid his talent and brought it to light again, I have spent mine, and can shew no portion of it. He did not ripen his blossoms, I have made strip and wast of mine. My beauty I have abused to voluptuousness, my wealth to luxury, my wit to knavery, my zeal to hypocrysy, my na­tural ingeny to maintain schism and heresy. U­tinam nescirem literas, O that thou hadst gi­ven me no talent, that having little I might had the lesse required: The heat of thy spi­rit has sometimes quickened in me the buds of grace, but the coldnesse of my devotion has nipp'd them: Or if the warmth, the sunshine of thy mercy or the fire of thy judgments has thaw'd my frozen heart and made it vigorous enough to bring forth blossoms, the Prince of this ayr has mildewed them: Or if the fruit has been set, it has either been blown down by the storms of Affliction, or wormeaten in the sunshine my prosperity, and grown rotten at the Core. Thus have our rods which should bud and blossom, and bring forth fruit, turned like the sorcerers to Serpents and stung us to death.

Observe yet farther, as Aarons rod had three degrees of fruitfulness, budding, blos­somming, [Page 110]and bearing fruit, so those three degrees met at one season, spring, summer, ana harvest was joyn'd together; as the one fed his hopes so the other confirmed his as­surance. 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 [Page 111]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 [Page 112]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 [Page 113]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, 'twas 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 [Page 114]three Evangelists) shall be called the House of prayer to all Nations. And now let the brain­sick 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 [Page 115]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. Tis strange that the one should be Morall the other Ceremo­niall. [...] say the Heathen. Psal. 74.8. they will burne up all the Synagogues in the Land. [...] say the Septuagint (chang­ing one letter) they will forbid all his festi­vals. But the first part of the verse reconciles both, Let us say they destroy them altogether: so that no Sanctuary, no budding rod; on budding rod, no Aaron; no Aaron, no worship of God.

Thus we have dispacht the history of the Text, with such inferences touched upon by the way, as could not well be bauk'd: Now since whatsoever was written of Old was written for our instruction, it will not be amiss to see how this rod of Aaron points down to us, and is laid up to testify against these latter dayes. And first I must not baulk the next high Priest, next in time, though first in honour, our Saviour Christ, who although he succeded not of Aarons order but of Melchizedecks, yet he is the Architype and substance which that other Priesthood shadowed. The Author to the Hebrews his saved me the labour of making an Analogy between them. And [Page 116]I hope his Offices without dispute will furnish him with a rod: as a King, a rod of power and correction, as a Prophet of guidance and in­struction, as a Priest, of comfort and sustentation. In vain was that scape-goat of the Jewes up­on whose head was laid the sins of the Con­gregation, if it were not for this Lamb slain from the beginning, this [...], this high-Priest which sacrificed himself, and laid, the burthen of all our sins upon his own shoulders: He it is that took the censer in his hand as Aaron did, when the fire of Gods wrath was gone out against us, and stood between the living and the dead, nay he fell down amongst the dead, and was num­bred among the transgressours that by his stripes we might be healed. He, he it is who in the last act of his life erected his crosse, the rod of his exaltation, that rod upon which his name was wrote, which bore most precious fruit, the fruit of his own Body, which whosoever can lay up in a sanctifyed heart, the Temple of the holy Ghost, may be sure to have it testi­fye for him in the latter day.

But being thus gone up on high, and lead ca­ptivity captive, and received guifts for Men, is he grown a niggard of them, and bestowed none upon his Church which he hath left be­hind him? Were the Jews better provided for, who were only ad memoriam, but types [Page 117]and figures of him that was to come; then we which are a memoria his remembrancers, and Priests in his stead: in persona ejus, sayes the vulgar, his deputies which here perso­nate him and act him over again? No: his Church has Aarons still, and the Aarons have their rods too: Nay the Aarons of the Gospel shall be refined too sayes Malachi 3. Chap. 3. God shall purge the Sons of Levi, which St. Hierome interprets the Evangeli­cal Ministers. If the Testament be above the law; God forbid the Ministration should be beneath it.

St. Paul 1 Cor. 12. tells us of divers [...] free graces or gifts proceeding from the Spirit verse 4. and that we may not think them to be heaped confusedly all upon one, in the next verse he speaks of several [...] administrations and offices among which they are devided, the graces are reckoned up verses 8, 9, 10. Some peculiar to the A­ postles some streaming down upon the skirts of the Church. The offices are recounted, v. 28. and of them likewise some meerly Apostolical, some permanent and perpetual; namely those three, Teachers, Helpers, Go­vernours. Perpetuall I call them, for besides that the light of nature instructed the hea­then, so far as the morality of the service of a God carried them to the same division [Page 118]of the [...] their helpers, their [...] their teachers, and the [...] their gover­nours, they are the very same which God prescribed his own people the Jews, in their Levites, their Helpers, and as it were their Deacons; their Priests, their Teachers, and in­structers; the sons of Aaron their Praelates and Governours. And thus we find the oynt­mentt powred upon Aarons, head has run down o his beard, and wet the borders of his garments. But this quick sighted generation amongst whom we live has seen farther into the words then any of the ancient Fathers, and out of the word Governours has extract­ed an Elixar their ruling Elders. A Go­vernment it is indeed, but such as Jothams bramble was, which burnt down the Cedars of Libanon, the pillars of the Temple: An opi­nion so full of novelty and void of authority that fourscore years ago it scarce had a be­ing. As if Gods Church all the time before had been hid with Eliah in his cave; or fled with the woman into the Wildernesse. Some there are I know which have deeply strained their wits to fetch this Government out of the Scriptures, and pinch hard upon that text, 1 Tim. 5.17. (when all other fail them) The Elders that rule well are worthy of double ho­nour, especially they which labour in the word, and Doctrine: Ergo by implication Elders [Page 119]there are (say they) which labour not and those are lay-ruling-Elders. But St. Chriso­stome which lived nearer, and knew more of the Apostles practise than we, found out a­nother sence. All Priests (sayes he) which may administer the Sacraments are not allow'd to preach: the meaner sort may deal with Baptism, the wiser only with the Word; Which difference St. Paul found in himself, 1 Corin. 1.17. Christ hath sent me not to baptize (says he) but to preach the Go­spel. If then thou hast such a Minister over thee as is gifted for both Offices, allow him a double honour. And let no man mistake the name of Elder or Presbyter in Scripture, which is no other then Priest or Minister, so St. John stiles himself in his two last Epistles, so St. Peter 1 Ep. 5.1. and so all the pen men of Gods holy Word have called the Ministers of the Gospel. Which is so noto­riously true, that the very patrons of this Go­vernment have disclamed the jus divinum of it, and make it onely a State convenience: Undenyably true it is that our Saviour in his time did choose his twelve Apostles as Supe­riours, his seventy as subordinate. Subordinato I say they were; for besides that they were forbidden by the other in the time of Christ, Luke 9.49. They were commanded by them afterward as Silas was by Paul, Acts 17.15. [Page 120]and so were within their power. Afterward that the Apostles left their successours Bi­shops may be evident by St. Pauls own E­pistles, to Timothy the Bishop of Ephesius, and Titus Bishop of Crete, and the undoubted testimony of Ireneus confirms it, who lived immediately upon the Apostles age: But what need we more Authority? St. Jude v. 11. Speaks of some in his time which perished in the gainsaying of Corah. What that was, ye have heard; he would be Aarons equall, how any could perish in it was impossible, unlesse by desiring or af­fecting a parity with their Governours. In the fear of God, Brethren, suffer then a word of Exhortation: This rod of Aaron ha's sap in it still and sprouts to this day. Oh shake not of the blossomes, pluck not off the fruit: if God have laid it up in the Tabernacle, let not Sa­crilegious hands steal it thence: Tis a rod of power, submit to it, a rod of correction, be a­fraid of it, a rod of instruction, obediently re­ceive it a rod of sustentation, rely on it. O­bey them which are set over you in the Lord. Let no Uzzah presume to touch the Ark; nor Uz­ziah to offer sacrifice, let the sons Levi only wait upon the altar. If a quis aequisivit, be terrible at the last day, who has required these things at your hands? will not prohibita sunt, have I not fobid thee; be much more terrible? [Page 129]We find in Exodus that Pharaohs sorcerers had got them rods too, but Moses his Serpent soon devour'd them: And the Sons of Sceva Act. 15.19. would be conjuring in the name of Jesus; but the Devil soon prov'd himself their Master. Beware that fearfull curse which befell the nolumus hunc regnare, those that would not let Christ raign over them: And such are they that despise his Ordinan­ces, and so do all such as disobey his substi­tutes. His substitutes I call them, for they are his Labourers, but one degree remov'd from himself, he is [...] they [...] he is, [...] they [...]: if God be the chief guide, Moses and Aaron are the hands to lead his people: if God be chief Shepheard, Peter and his partners have the office under him to feed the flock. 1 Pet. 5. And if in temporalls the civil Magistrate at this day thinks himself suffici­ent without bringing the difficultest causes to Aaron and the Priests, as God prescribes Deuter. the 17.8, 9. if Jehoshaphat, I say, think his Judges able to dispatch [...] the affairs of State, yet let the Priest dispence [...], 2 Chro. 19.8. The Lords business, the judgment cause of the Lord. Make not thy self the Devils instrument, since he hath left disputing about Moses his body, for thee to dispute Aarons authority. But rather joyn with that Captain of Israel in his prayer for [Page 103] Levi. Deuter. 33. Let thy Urim and Thumim be with thy holy one, bless O Lord his substance and accept the work of his hands, and smite through the loins of them that rise up against him, and of them that hate him, that they rise not a­gain. To conclude: Aarans rod is Gods rod and Gods rod will alwayes bring forth fruit, either sweet or bitter Almonds: sermons prove either the savour of Life or death. May that rod and this Sermon take such deep rooting in our heart, that it may bring foorth fruit abundantly in our lives, to Gods honour his Churches glory, our own comfort, &c.

Gloria Deo in Excelsis.