should be welcome into his arms, after all her prostitutions: that the world, this world, all this world, should believe this, and believe it thus; this was the apostle's altitudo divitiarum, the depth of the riches of God's wisdom": and this is his longitudo, and latitudo, the breadth, and length, and heighth, and depth, which no man can comprehend". Theudas rose up, Dicens se esse aliquem, he said he was somebody; and he proved nobody. Simon Magus rose up, Dicens se esse aliquem magnum, saying, he was some great body s; and he proved as little. Christ Jesus rose up, and said himself not to be somebody, nor some great body; but that there was nobody else, no other name given under heaven, whereby we should be saved; and was believed. And therefore, if any man think to destroy this general, by making himself a woful instance to the contrary; Christ is not believed in all the world, for I never believed in Christ: so poor an objection, requires no more answer, but that that will still be true in the general; Man is a reasonable creature, though he be an unreasonable man.

56

Now when he was thus preached to the Gentiles, and thus believed in the world, that is, means thus established, for believing in him, he had done all that he had to do here, and therefore, Receptus in gloria, he was received into glory: he was received, assumed, taken; therefore he did not vanish away; he had no airy, no imaginary, no fantastical body; he was true man: and then he was received, re-assumed, taken again, and so was in glory before; and therefore was true God. This which we are fain to call glory, is an inexpressible thing, and an incommunicable: Surely I will not give my glory unto another, says God in Isaiah", we find great titles attributed to, and assumed by princes, both spiritual and temporal: Celsitudo vestra, et vestra majestas, is daily given, and duly given amongst us: and Sanctitas vestra, et vestra beatitudo, is given amongst others. Aben-Ezra, and some other rabbins mistake this matter so much, as to deny that any person in the Old Testament ever speaks of himself in the plural number, Nos, we: that is mistaken by them; for there are examples 58. But it is more mistaken in practice, by the generals, nay

54 Rom. xi. 33. 57 Isaiah XLviii. 11.

55

Eph. iii. 18.

56 Acts v. 36.

38 1 Kings xii. 9, and xxii. 3; 2 Chron. x. 9.

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provincials of some orders of friars, when they sign and subscribe in form and style of princes, Nos frater, We friar N., &c. It is not hard to name some, that have taken to themselves the addition of Divus in their life-time; a style so high, as that Bellarmine denies that it appertains to any saint in heaven and yet these men have canonized themselves, without the consent of Rome; and yet remained good sons of that mother too: we shall find in ancient styles, that high addition, Eternitas nostra, Our eternity: and not only in an ancient, but in our own days, another equal to that, given to a particular cardinal, Numen restrum, Your godhead. We find a letter in Baronius, to a pope, from a king of Britain (and so Baronius leaves it, and does not tell us which Britain; he could have been content to have had it thought ours; but he that hath abridged his book", hath abridged his Britain too, there it is Britannia minor: but he was a king, and therefore had power, if he filled his place; and wisdom too, if he answered his name; for his name was Solomon) and this king we find reduced to this lowness, as that he writes to that bishop, Adrian II., in that style, Precor omnipotentiam dignitatis vestra: he gives him the title of God, Almighty. But two or three years before, he was far from it; then, when he writ, he placed his own name above the pope's: but it is a slippery declination, if it be not a precipitation, to come at all under him: great titles have been taken, ambition goes far; and great given, flattery goes as far greater than this in the text, perchance have; but it hath not fallen within my narrow reading, and observation, that ever prince took, that ever subject gave this title, Gloria nostra, or cestra; May it please your glory, or, It hath seemed good to our glory. Glory be to God on high; and glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, and no more. As long as that scurf, that leprosy sticks to everything in this world, Vanitas, vanitatem, that all is vanity can any glory in anything of this

world, be other than vain glory? What title of honour hath any man had in any state, in court, that some prison in that state hath not had men of that title in it? Nay, what title hath any herald's book, that Lucifer's book hath not? Or who can be so great in this world, but that as great as he have perished in the

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Spondanus.

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next? As it is not good for men to eat much honey"; so, for men to search their own glory, is not glory. Crowns are the emblems of glory; and kings out of their abundant greatness and goodness, derive and distribute crowns to persons of title; and by those crowns, and those titles, they are consanguinei regis, the king's cousins. Christ Jesus is crowned with glory in heaven, and he sheds down coronets upon you; honour, and blessings here, that you might be consanguinei regis; contract a spiritual kindred with that king, and be idem Spiritus cum Domino, as inseparable from his Father, as he himself is. The glory of God's saints in heaven, is not so much to have a crown, as to lay down that crown at the feet of the Lamb. The glory of good men here upon earth, is not so much to have honour, and favour, and fortune, as to employ those beams of glory, to his glory that gave them. In our poor calling, God hath given us grace; but grace for grace, as the apostle says, that is, grace to derive, and convey, and seal grace to you. To those of higher rank, God hath given glory; and glory for glory; glory therefore to glorify him, in a care of his glory. And because he dwells in luce inaccessibili, in a glorious light which you cannot see here; glorify him in that wherein you may see him, in that wherein he hath manifested himself; glorify him in his glorious Gospel: employ your beams of glory, honour, favour, fortune, in transmitting his Gospel in the same glory to your children, as you received it from your fathers: for in this consists this mystery of godliness, which is, faith with a pure conscience and in this lies your best evidence, that you are already co-assumed with Christ Jesus into glory, by having so laid an unremovable hold upon that kingdom which he hath purchased for you, with the inestimable price of his incorruptible blood. To which glorious Son of God, &c.

60 Prov. xxv. 27.

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SERMON CXXXVI.

A LENT SERMON PREAChed to the KING, AT WHITEHALL, FEBRUARY 12, 1629.

MATTHEW Vi. 21.

For, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I HAVE seen minute-glasses; glasses so short-lived. If I were to preach upon this text, to such a glass, it were enough for half the sermon; enough to show the wordly man his treasure, and the object of his heart (for, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also) to call his eye to that minute-glass, and to tell him, there flows, there flies your treasure, and your heart with it. But if I had a secular glass, a glass that would run an age; if the two hemispheres of the world were composed in the form of such a glass, and all the world calcined and burnt to ashes, and all the ashes, and sands, and atoms of the world put into that glass, it would not be enough to tell the godly man what his treasure, and the object of his heart is. A parrot, or a stare, docile birds, and of pregnant imitation, will sooner be brought to relate to us the wisdom of a council-table, than any Ambrose, or any Chrysostom, men that have gold and honey in their names, shall tell us what the sweetness, what the treasure of heaven is, and what that man's peace, that hath set his heart upon that treasure. As nature hath given us certain elements, and all bodies are composed of them; and art hath given us a certain alphabet of letters, and all words are composed of them: so, our blessed Saviour, in these three chapters of this Gospel, hath given us a sermon of texts, of which, all our sermons may be composed. All the articles of our religion, all the canons of our church, all the injunctions of our princes, all the homilies of our fathers, all the body of divinity, is in these three chapters, in this one sermon in the Mount: where, as the preacher concludes his sermon with exhortations to practice, (whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doth them') so he fortifies his sermon, with his own practice,

1 Matt. vii. 24.

(which is a blessed and a powerful method) for, as soon as h came out of the pulpit, as soon as he came down from the Mount, he cured the first leper he saw, and that, without all vain glory : for he forbade him to tell any man of it.

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Our

Of this noble body of divinity, one fair limb is in this text, Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Immediately before, our blessed Saviour had forbidding us the laying up of treasure in this world, upon this reason, that here moths and rust corrupt, and thieves break in, and steal. There, the reason is, because the money may be lost; but here, in our text it is, because the man may be lost for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also: so that this is equivalent to that, What profit to gain the whole world, and lose a man's whole soul? text, therefore, stands as that proverbial, that hieroglyphical letter, Pythagoras's Y; that hath first a stalk, a stem to fix itself, and then spreads into two beams. The stem, the stalk of this letter, this Y, is in the first word of the text, that particle of argumentation, for: Take heed where you place your treasure: for it concerns you much, where your heart be placed; and, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And then opens this symbolical, this catechistical letter, this Y, into two horns, two beams, two branches; one broader, but on the lefthand, denoting the treasures of this world; the other narrower, but on the right-hand, treasure laid up for the world to come. Be sure ye turn the right way: for, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

First then, we bind ourselves to the stake, to the stalk, to the staff, the stem of this symbolical letter, and consider in it, that firmness and fixation of the heart, which God requires. God requires no unnatural things at man's hand: whatsoever God requires of man, man may find imprinted in his own nature, written in his own heart. This firmness then, this fixation of the heart, is natural to man: every man does set his heart upon something and Christ in this place does not so much call upon him, that he would do so, set his heart upon something; as to be sure that he set it upon the right object. And yet truly, even this first work, to recollect ourselves, to recapitulate ourselves, to