declination of the kingdom of that great and glorious state, the kingdom; but then they did not seditiously sever the king, and the kingdom, as though the kingdom could do well, and the king ill, that safe, and he in danger, for they see cause to lament, because misery was fallen upon the person of the king; perchance upon Josiah, a good, a religious king; perchance but upon Zedekiah, a worse king; yet, whichsover it be, they acknowledge him to be Unctus Domini, the anointed of the Lord, and to be Spiritus narium, The breath of their nostrils: when this person therefore, was fallen into the pits of the enemy, the subject laments; but this lamenting because he was fallen, implies a deliverance, a restitution, he was fallen, but he did not lie there: so the text, which is as yet but of lamentation, will grow an hour hence to be of congratulation; and then we shall see, that whosoever, in rectified affections, hath lamented a danger, and then congratulated a deliverance, he will provide against a relapse, a falling again into that or any other danger, by all means of sustaining the kingdom and the king, in safety and in honour.

Our first step then in this royal progress, is, that the cause of this lamentation, was, the declination, the diminution of the kingdom. If the centre of the world should be moved but one inch out of the place, it cannot be reckoned how many miles, this island, or any building in it, would be thrown out of their places; a declination in the kingdom of the Jews, in the body of the kingdom, in the soul of the state, in the form of government, was such an earthquake, as could leave nothing standing. Of all things that are, there was an idea in God; there was a model, a platform, an exemplar of everything, which God produced and created in time, in the mind and purpose of God before: of all things God had an idea, a preconception; but of monarchy, of kingdom, God, who is but one, is the idea; God himself, in his unity, is the model, he is the type of monarchy. He made but one world; for, this, and the next, are not two worlds; this is but the morning, and that the everlasting noon, of one and the same day, which shall have no night: they are not two houses; this is the gallery, and that the bedchamber of one, and the same palace, which shall feel no ruin. He made this one world, but one eye, the sun; the moon is not another eye, but a glass, upon

which, the sun reflects. He made this one world, but one ear, the church; he tells not us, that he hears by a left ear, by saints, but by that right ear, the church he doth. There is one God, one faith, one baptism, and these lead us to the love of one sovereign, of monarchy, of kingdom. In that name, God hath conveyed to us the state of grace, and the state of glory too; and he hath promised both, in enjoining that petition, Adveniat regnum, Thy kingdom come, thy kingdom of grace here, thy kingdom of glory hereafter. All forms of government have one and the same soul, that is, sovereignty; that resides somewhere in every form; and this sovereignty is in them all, from one and the same root, from the Lord of lords, from God himself, for all power is of God: but yet this form of a monarchy, of a kingdom, is a more lively, and a more masculine organ, and instrument of this soul of sovereignty, than the other forms are: we are sure women have souls as well as men, but yet it is not so expressed, that God breathed a soul into woman, as he did into man; all forms of government have this soul, but yet God infuseth it more manifestly, and more effectually, in that form, in a kingdom: all places are alike near to heaven, yet Christ would take a hill, for his ascension; all governments may justly represent God to me, who is the God of order, and fountain of all government, but yet I am more eased, and more accustomed to the contemplation of heaven, in that notion, as heaven is a kingdom, by having been born, and bred in a monarchy: God is a type of that, and that is a type of heaven.

This form then, in nature the noblest, in use the profitablest of all others, God always intended to his best beloved people, God always meant that the Jews should have a king, though he prepared them in other forms before; as he meant them peace at last, though he exercised them in war, and meant them the land of promise, though he led them through the wilderness; so he meant them a king, though he prepared them by judges. God intended it in himself, and he declared it to them, four hundred years before he gave them a king, he instructed them, what kind of king they should set over them, when they came to that kind of government: and long before that he made

Deut. xvii. 14.

a promise, by Jacob to Judah of a kingdom, and that the sceptre should not depart from him, till Shiloh came. And when God came near the time, in which he intended to them that government, in the time of Samuel, who was the immediate predecessor to their first king, Saul, God made way for a monarchy, for Samuel had a much more absolute authority, in that state, than any of the judges had; Samuel judged them, and in their petition for a king, they ask but that, Make us a king to judge us; Samuel was little less than a king; and Saul's reign, and his, are reckoned both in one number, and made as the reign of one man; when it is said in the Acts, that Saul reigned forty years, Samuel's time is included in that number, for all the years, from the death of Eli, to the beginning of David, are but forty years. God meant them a kingdom in himself, promised them a kingdom in Judah, made laws for their kingdom in Deuteronomy, made way for the kingdom in Samuel, and why then was God displeased with their petition for a kingdom?

It was a greater fault in them, than it could have been in any other people, to ask a king; not that it was not the most desirable form of government, but that God governed them, so immediately, so presentially himself, as that it was an ingrateful intemperance in them, to turn upon any other means; God had ever performed that which he promised them, in that which comprehended all, Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me, above all people"; and therefore Josephus hath expressed it well; all other people are under the form of democraty, or aristocraty, or such other forms, composed of men; Sed noster legislator, theocratiam instituit, The Jews were only under a theocraty, an immediate government of God, he judged them himself, and he himself fought their battles: and therefore God says to Samuel, They have not rejected thee, thou wast not king, but they have rejected Me, I was. To be weary of God, is it enough to call it a levity? But if they did only compare form with form, and not God himself with any form, if they did only think monarchy best, and believe that God intended a monarchy to them, yet to limit God his time, and to make God perform his promise before his day,

was a fault, and inexcusable. Daniel saw, that the Messiah should come within seventy week: Daniel did not say, Lord, let it be within fifty weeks, or let it be this week: the martyrs under the altar, cry Usquequo Domine, How long Lord, but then, they leave it there, even as long as pleaseth thee: their petition should have been, Adveniat regnum tuum, Let us have that kingdom, which because thou knowest it is good for us, thou hast promised to us; but yet Fiat voluntas tua, Let us have it then, when thy wisdom sees it best for us: you said to me (says Samuel, by way of reproof and increpation) you said, Nay, but a king shall reign over us'; now, that was not their fault; but that which follows, the unseasonableness and inconsideration of their clamorous petition, You said a king shall reign over us, when the Lord your God was your king; they would not trust God's means, there was their first fault: and then, though they desired a thing good in itself, and a good intended to them, yet they fixed God his time, and they would not stay his leisure; and either of these, to ask other things than God would give, or at other times, than God would give them, is displeasing to him: use his means, and stay his leisure.

But yet, though God were displeased with them, he executed his own purpose; he was angry with their manner of asking a king, but yet he gave them a king: howsoever God be displeased with them, who prevaricate in his cause, who should sustain it, and do not, God's cause shall be sustained, though they do it not. We may distinguish the period of the Jewish state well enough, thus, that they had infantiam, or pueritiam, their infancy, their minority, in Adam, and the first patriarchs till the flood: that they had adolescentiam, a growing time, from Noah, through the other patriarchs, till Moses: and that they had juventutem, a youth and strength from Moses, through the judges, to Saul: but then they had virilitatem, virilem ætatem, their established vigour, under their kings; and after them, they fell in senectutem, into a wretched and miserable decay of old age, and decrepitness: their kingdom was their best state; and so much, God in the prophet, intimates pregnantly, when refreshing to their memories, in a particular inventory, and catalogue, all his former benefits to

91 Sam. xii. 12.

them, how he clothed Jerusalem, how he fed her, how he adorned her, he summed up all, in this one, Et profecisti in regnum, I have advanced thee, to be a kingdom 10: there was the tropic, there was the solstice, farther than that, in this world, we know not how God could go; a kingdom was really the best state upon earth, and symbolically, the best figure, and type of heaven. And therefore, when the prophet Jeremy, historically beheld the declination of this kingdom, in the death of Josiah, and prophetically foresaw the ruins thereof, in the transportation of Zedekiah, or, if he had seen that historically too, yet prophetically he foresaw the utter devastation, and depopulation, and extermination, which scattered that nation, soon after Christ, to this day, (and God and no man knows, for how long,) when they, who were a kingdom, are now nowhere a village, and they who had such kings, have now nowhere a constable of their own, historically, prophetically, Jeremy had just cause of lamentation for the danger of that kingdom.

We had so also, for this our kingdom, this day; God hath given us a kingdom, not as other kingdoms, made up of divers cities, but of divers kingdoms, and all those kingdoms were destined to desolation, in one minute. It was not only the destruction of the persons present, but of the kingdom, for to submit the kingdom to the government of a foreign prelate, was to destroy the monarchy, to annihilate the supremacy, to ruin the very form of a kingdom; a kingdom under another head, besides the king, is not a kingdom, as ours is. The oath that the emperor takes to the pope, is by their authors called Juramentum Fidelitatis, an Oath of Allegiance; and if they had brought our kings, to take an oath of allegiance so, this were no kingdom. Pope Nicholas the Second, went about to create two kingdoms, that of Tuscany, and that of Lombardy; his successors have gone about to destroy more; for to make it depend upon him, were to destroy our kingdom. That they have attempted historically; and as long as these axioms, and aphorisms remain in their authors, that one shall say, that de jure, by right all Christian kingdoms do hold of the pope, and de facto, are forfeited to the pope, and another shall say, that Christendom would

"Ezek. xvi. 3.