SERMON S.

SERMON CXIV.

PREACHED AT DENMARK HOUSE,

SOME FEW DAYS BEFORE THE BODY OF KING JAMES WAS REMOVED FROM THENCE, TO HIS BURIAL, APRIL 26, 1625 1.

CANTICLES iii. 11.

Go forth ye daughters of Sion, and behold King Solomon, with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him, in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.

In the creation of man, in that one word, Faciamus, Let us make man, God gave such an intimation of the Trinity, as that we may well enlarge, and spread, and paraphrase that one word, so far, as to hear therein, a council of all the three persons, agreeing in this gracious design upon man, Faciamus, Let us make him; make him, and mend him, and make him sure: I, the Father, will make him by my power; if he should fall, thou the Son shalt repair him, re-edify him, redeem him; if he should distrust that this redemption belonged not to him, thou, the Holy Ghost, shalt apply to his particular soul, and conscience, this mercy of mine, and this merit of the Son's; and so let us make him. In our text there is an intimation of another Trinity. The words are spoken but by one, but the persons in the text are three; for first, the speaker, the director of all, is the church, the spouse of Christ, she says, Go forth ye daughters of Sion; and then the persons that are called up, are, as you see, the daughters of Sion, the obedient children of the church, that hearken to her voice: and then lastly, the persons upon whom they are directed, is Solomon crowned, that is, Christ invested with the royal dignity

The king died March 27.

VOL. V.

B

of being head of the church; and in this, especially, is this appliable to the occasion of our present meeting (all our meetings now, are, to confess to the glory of God, and the rectifying of our own consciences, and manners, the uncertainty of the prosperity, and the assuredness of the adversity of this world) that this crown of Solomon's in the text, will appear to be Christ's crown of thorns, his humiliation, his passion; and so these words will dismiss us in this blessed consolation, that then we are nearest to our crown of glory, when we are in tribulation in this world, and then enter into full possession of it, when we come to our dissolution and transmigration out of this world: and these three persons, the church that calls, the children that hearken, and Christ in his humiliation, to whom they are sent, will be the three parts, in which we shall determine this exercise.

First then, the person that directs us, is the church; no man hath seen God, and lives; but no man lives till he have heard God; for God spake to him, in his baptism, and called him by his name, then. Now, as it were a contempt in the king's house, for any servant to refuse anything, except he might hear the king in person command it, when the king hath already so established the government of his house, as that his commandments are to be signified by his great officers: so neither are we to look that God should speak to us mouth to mouth, spirit to spirit, by inspiration, by revelation, for it is a large mercy, that he hath constituted an office, and established a church, in which we should hear him. When Christ was baptized by John, it is said by all those three evangelists, that report that story, in particular circumstances, that there was a voice heard from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased: and it is not added in any of those three evangelists, that that voice added, hear him: for, after that declaration, that he, who was visibly and personally come amongst them, was the Son of God, there was no reason to doubt of men's willingness to hear him, who went forth in person, to preach unto them, in this world; as long as he was to stay with them, it was not likely that they should need provocation, to hear him, therefore that was not added at his baptism, and entrance into his personal ministry: but when Christ came to his transfiguration, which was a mani

festation of his glory, in the next world, and an intimation of the approaching of the time of his going away, to the possession of that glory, out of this world, there that voice from heaven says, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear him2: when he was gone out of this world, men needed a more particular solicitation to hear him; for how, and where, and in whom should they hear him, when he was gone? In the church, for the same testimony that God gave of Christ, to authorize and justify his preaching, hath Christ given of the church, to justify her power: the Holy Ghost fell upon Christ, at his baptism, and the Holy Ghost fell upon the apostles, (who were the representative church) at Whitsuntide: the Holy Ghost tarried upon Christ then, and the Holy Ghost shall tarry with the church, usque ad consummationem, till the end of the world. And therefore, as we have that institution from Christ, dic ecclesiæ, when men are refractory and perverse, to complain to the church, so have they who are complained of to the church, that institution from Christ also, audi ecclesiam, hearken to the voice of God, in the church; and they have from him that commination, If you disobey them, you disobey God; in what fetters soever they bind you, you shall rise bound in those fetters; and, as he who is excommunicated in one diocese, should not be received in another; so let no man presume of a better state, in the Triumphant church, than he holds in the Militant, or hope for communion there, that despises excommunication here. That which the Scripture says, God says, (says St. Augustine) for the Scripture is his word; and that which the church says, the Scriptures say, for she is their word, they speak in her; they authorize her, and she explicates them; the Spirit of God inanimates the Scriptures, and makes them his Scriptures, the church actuates the Scriptures, and makes them our Scriptures: Nihil salubrius, says the same father, There is not so wholesome a thing, no soul can live in so good an air, and in so good a diet, Quam ut rationem præcedat authoritas, Then still to submit a man's own particular reason, to the authority of the church expressed in the Scriptures: for, certainly it is very truly (as it is very usefully) said by Calvin, Semper nimia morositas, est ambitiosa, A frowardness, and an

2 Matt. xvii. 5.

aptness to quarrel at the proceedings of the church, and to be delivered from the obligations, and constitutions of the church, is ever accompanied with an ambitious pride, that they might enjoy a licentious liberty; it is not because the church doth truly take too much power, but because they would be under none; it is an ambition, to have all government in their own hands, and to be absolute emperors of themselves, that makes them refractory: but, if they will pretend to believe in God, they must believe in God so, as God hath manifested himself to them, they must believe in Christ; so if they will pretend to hear Christ, they must hear him there, where he hath promised to speak, they must hear him in the church.

The first reason then in this Trinity, the person that directs, is the church; the trumpet in which God sounds his judgments, and the organ in which he delivers his mercy; and then the persons of the second place, the persons to whom the church speaks here, are filia Sion, The daughters of Sion, her own daughters. We are not called filii ecclesia, sons of the church: the name of sons may imply more virility, more manhood, more sense of our own strength, than becomes them, who profess an obedience to the church: therefore, as by a name, importing more facility, more suppleness, more application, more tractableness, she calls her children daughters. But then, being a mother, and having the dignity of a parent upon her, she does not proceed supplicatorily, she does not pray them, nor intreat them, she does not say, I would you would go forth, and I would you would look out, but it is egredimini, et videte, imperatively, authoritatively, do it, you must do it: so that she shows what, in important and necessary cases, the power of the church is, though her ordinary proceedings, by us and our ministry be, to pray you, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God. In your baptism, your souls became daughters of the church; and they must continue so, as long as they continue in you; you cannot divest your allegiance to the church, though you would; no more than you can to the state, to whom you cannot say, I will be no subject. A father may disinherit his son upon reasons, but even that disinherited child cannot renounce his father. That church which conceived thee in the covenant of God, made to Christians