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SERMON CXXVII.

THE SECOND SERMON PREACHED BY THE AUTHOR AFTER HE CAME TO ST. DUNSTAN'S, 25TH APRIL, 1624,

PSALM XXXIV. 11.

Come ye children, hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

THE text does not call children simply, literally, but such men, and women, as are willing to come in the simplicity of children; such children, as Christ spoke of, Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven'; Come ye children; come such children. Nor does the text call such as come, and would fain be gone again; it is come and hearken; not such as wish themselves away, nor such as wish another man here; but such as value God's ordinance of preaching, though it be, as the apostle says, but the foolishness of preaching, and such, as consider the office, and not the person, how mean soever; Come ye children; and, when ye are come, hearken, and, though it be but I, hearken unto me; and, I will teach you the fear of the Lord; the most noble, the most courageous, the most magnanimous, not affection, but virtue, in the world; Come ye children, hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

To every minister and dispenser of the Word of God, and to every congregation belong these words; and therefore we will divide the text between us; to you one, to us appertains the other part. You must come, and you must hearken; we must teach, and teach to edification; there is the meum et tuum, your part, and our part. From each part, these branches flow out naturally; in yours, first, the capacity, as children; then the action, you come; then your disposition here, you hearken; and lastly, your submission to God's ordinance, you hearken even unto me, unto any minister of his sending. In our part, there is first a teaching; for, else, why should you come, or hearken unto me, or any? It is a teaching, it is not only a praying; and then, there is a catholic doctrine, a circular doctrine, that walks the round, and 21 Cor. i. 21.

1 Matt. xviii. 3.

goes the compass of our whole lives, from our first, to our last childhood, when age hath made us children again, and it is the art of arts, the root, and fruit of all true wisdom, The true fear of the Lord. Come ye children, hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

First then, the word, in which, in the first branch of the first part, your capacity is expressed, filii, pueri, children, is, from the original, which is banim, often accepted in three notions, and so rendered; three ways, men are called children, out of that word banim, in the Scriptures. Either it is servi, servants; for, they are filii familiares; as the master is pater familias, father of the family, (and that he is, though there be no natural children in the family) the servants are children of the family, and are very often in Scriptures called so, pueri, children; or it is alumni, nurse-children, foster-children, filii mammillares, children of the breasts; whether we minister to them, temporal or spiritual nourishment, they are children; or else it is filii viscerales, children of our bowels, our natural children. And in all these three capacities, as servants, as sucking children, as sons, are you called upon in this appellation, in this compellation, children.

First, as you are servants, you are children; for, without distinction of age, servants are called so, frequently, ordinarily, in the Scriptures, pueri. The priest asks David, before he would give him the holy bread, An vasa puerorum sancta, Whether those children, (speaking of David's followers) were clean from women3; here were children that were able to get children. Nay, David's soldiers are often called so, pueri, children. In the first of the Kings', he takes a muster, recenset pueros; here were children that were able to kill men. You are his children, (of what age soever) as you are his servants; and in that capacity he calls you. You are unprofitable servants; but it is not an unprofitable service, to serve God; he can get nothing by you, but you can have nothing without him. The centurion's servants came, when he said, Come; and was their wages like yours? Had they their being, their everlasting well-being for their service? You will scarce receive a servant, that is come from another man, without testimony; if you put yourselves out 1 Kings xx. 15.

31 Sam. xxi. 5.

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of God's service, whither will ye go? In his service, and his only, is perfect freedom. And therefore as you love freedom, and liberty, be his servants; and call the freedom of the Gospel, the best freedom, and come to the preaching of that.

He calls you children, as you are servants, (filii familiares) and he calls you children, as you are alumni, nurse-children, filii mammillares, as he requires the humility, and simplicity of little children in you. For, Cum simplicibus sermocinatio ejus, (as the Vulgate reads that place) God's secret discourse is with the single heart. The first that ever came to Christ, (so as he came to us, in blood) they that came to him so, before he came so to us, that died for him, before he died for them, were such sucking children, those whom Herod slew. As Christ thought himself bound to thank his Father, for that way of proceeding, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast revealed these things unto babes; so Christ himself pursues the same way, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven". Of such; not only of those who were truly, literally children, (children in age) but of such as those, (talium est regnum cœlorum) such as come in such a disposition, in the humility, in the simplicity, in the singleness of heart, as children do. An habitual sinner is always in minority, always an infant; an infant to this purpose, all his acts, all the bands of an infant, are void; all the outward religious actions, even the band and contract of baptism in an habitual sinner is void, and ineffectual. He that is in the house, and favour of God, though he be a child, (a child to this purpose, simple, supple, tractable, single-hearted) is, as Adam was in the state of innocency, a man the first minute, able to stand upright in the sight of God. And out of one place of Esay, our expositors have drawn, conveniently enough, both these conclusions; A child shall die a hundred years old, says the prophet; that is, (say some) a sinner though he live a hundred years, yet he dies a child, in ignorance; and then, (say others, and both truly) He that comes willingly, when God calls, though he die a child in age, he hath the wisdom of a hundred years upon him.

6 Matt. xi. 25.

5 Prov. iii. 32.

7 Matt. xix. 14.

8 Isaiah LXV. 20.

There is not a graver thing, than to be such a child; to conform his will to the will of God. Whether you consider temporal or spiritual things, you are God's children. For, for temporal, if God should take off his hand, withdraw his hand of sustentation, all those things, which assist us temporally, would relapse to the first feeble, and childish estate, and come to their first nothing. Armies would be but hospitals, without all strength; counciltables but bedlams, without all sense; and schools and universities, but the wrangling of children, if God, and his Spirit did not inanimate our schools, and armies, and councils. His adoption makes us men, therefore, because it makes us his children. But we are his children in this consideration especially, as we are his spiritual children, as he hath nursed us, fed us with his word. In which sense, the apostle speaks of those who had embraced the true religion, (in the same words that the prophet had spoken before) Behold, I, and the children that God hath giren me'; and in the same sense, the same prophet, in the same place, says of them who had fallen away from the true religion, They please themselves in the children of strangers, in those men, who have derived their orders, and their doctrine from a foreign jurisdiction. In that state where adoptions were so frequent, (in old Rome) a plebeian could not adopt a patrician, a yeoman could not adopt a gentleman, nor a young man could not adopt an old. In the new Rome, that endeavours to adopt all, in an imaginary filiation, you that have the perfect freedom of God's service, be not adopted into the slavery, and bondage of men's traditions; you that are in possession of the ancient religion, of Christ, and his apostles, be not adopted into a younger religion. Religio à religando; That is religion, that binds; that binds, that is necessary to salvation. That which we affirm, our adversaries deny not; that which we profess, they confess was always necessary to salvation. They will not say, that all that they say now, was always necessary; that a man could not be saved without believing the articles of the Council of Trent, a week before that council shut up. You are his children, as children are servants; and, if he be your Lord, where is his fear? You are his children,

VOL. V.

9 Heb. ii. 13.

10 Isaiah ii. 6.

T

as he hath nursed you, with the milk of his word; and if he be your Father so, (your foster-father) where is his love"?

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But he is your Father otherwise; you are not only filii familiares, children because servants, nor only filii mammillares, children because nursed by him, but you are also filii viscerales, children of his bowels. For, we are otherwise allied to Christ, than we can be to any of his instruments, though angels of the church, prophets, or apostles; and yet, his apostle says, of one whom he loved, of Onesimus, Receive him, that is, mine own bowels; my Son, says he, whom I have begotten in my bands. How much more art thou bound to receive and refresh those bowels from which thou art derived, Christ Jesus himself; receive him, refresh him. Carry that, which the wise man hath said, Miserere animæ tuæ, Be merciful to thine own soul, higher than so; and Miserere Salvatoris tui, Have mercy upon thine own Saviour, put on the bowels of mercy13, and put them on even towards Christ Jesus himself, who needs thy mercy, by being so torn, and mangled, and embowelled, by blasphemous oaths, and execrations. For, beloved, it is not so absurd a prayer, as it is conceived, if Luther did say upon his death-bed, Oremus pro Domino nostro Jesu Christo, Let us pray for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Had we not need pray for him? If he complain that Saul persecutes him, had we not need pray for him? It is a seditious affection in civil things, to divide the king and the kingdom; to pray, to fight for the one, and leave out the other, is seditiously done. If the kingdom of Christ need thy prayers, and thy assistance, Christ needs it; if the body need it, the head needs it; if thou must pray for his Gospel, thou must pray for him; nay, thou canst not pray for thyself, but thou must pray for him, for, thou art his bowels; when thou in thy forefathers, the first Christians in the primitive church, wast persecuted, Christ cried out, Why persecutest thou me? Christ made thy case his, because thou wast of his bowels. When Christ is disseised, and dispossessed, his truth profligated, and thrown out of a nation, that professed it before, when Christ is wounded by the blasphemies of others, and crucified by thee, in thy relapses to repented sins,

11 Mal. i. 6.

12 Philem. 12.

13 Colos. iii. 12.