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most precious merchandizes of nature and grace, haled in every day to these deceitful ports of error; the owners partly cheated, partly robbed of truth; despoiled of their rich freight; and, at last, turned overboard into a sea of desperation? O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey, that ye should not hold fast the Truth?

Where shall I lay the fault of this miscarriage? Methinks I could ask the Disciples' question, Nunquid ego, Domine, Is it we, Lord? Are there of us, that preach ourselves, and not Christ? Are there, that preach Christ, and live him not? Woe to the world, because of offences! It must needs be, that offences should come; but woe to the man by whom the offence cometh! God forbid, that we should be so bad, that the Seven Hills should not justify us. But, whatever we be, the Truth is still and ever itself; neither the better for our innocence, nor worse for our guilt. If men be faulty, what hath Truth offended? Except the Sacred Word of the Ever Living God can misguide you, we have set you right. We are but dust and ashes; yet, O God, give us, thine humble vassals, leave, in an awful confidence, so far to contest with thee, the Lord of Heaven and Earth, as to say, If we be deceived, thou hast deceived us. It is thou, that hast spoken by us to thy people. Let God be true, and every man a liar. Whither should we go from thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life.

Dear Christians, our forefathers transmitted to us the entire inheritance of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ, repurchased by the blood of their martyrdom: Oh, let not our ill husbandry impair it. Let not posterity once say, they might have been happy, but for the unthriftiness of us, their progenitors. Let it not be said, that the coldness of us, the teachers and professors of Truth, hath dealt with religion as Rehoboam did with his shields, which he found of gold, but left of brass.

If Truth had no friends, we should plead for it: but now, that we have before our eyes so powerful an Teans, "Defender" of Christian Faith, that with his very pen hath so laid error upon the back, that all the world cannot raise it; what a shame were it, to be wanting to him, to Truth, to ourselves?

But, perhaps, now I know some of your thoughts. You would buy Truth, ye think, you would hold it, if ye could be sure to know it. There are many slips amongst the true coin. Either of the mothers pleaded the living child to be hers, with equal protestations, oaths, tears. True, yet a Solomon's sword can divide truth from falsehood: and there is a test, and fire, that can discern true metals from adulterate. In spite of all counterfeiting, there are certain infallible marks, to know truth from error. Take but a few of many: whether in the Originals, in the Natures, in the Ends of both.

In the first: truth is divine, error is human: what is grounded upon the divine word must needs be irrefragably true; that, which upon human traditions, either must or may be erroneous.

In the second: truth is one, conformed ever to itself; dar

σuvaλydɛúa, as one said: Omne verum omni vero consonat, "All truth accords with every truth;" as Gerson. And, as it is pure, so peaceable: error is full of dissonance, of cruelty. No particulars of ours dissent from the written verity of God. We teach no man to equivocate. Our practice is not bloody with treasons and mas

sacres.

In the third: truth, as it came from God, so is referred to him; neither hath any other end than the glory of the God of Truth: error hath ever some self-respects; either αἰσχροκερδίαν, or κενοδοξίαν, filthy lucre, or vain-glory; profit, or pride. We do not prank up nature. We aim not, either to fill the coffers, or feed the ambition of men. Let your wisdoms apply and infer.

And now, if ye can, shut your eyes, that you should not see the Truth; and, if ye care not for your souls, when ye see it, sell it. Let no false tongue persuade you there is no danger in this sale. How charitably soever we think of poor blinded souls, that live in the forced and invincible darkness of error, certainly Apostacy is deadly. However those speed, that are robbed of Truth, you cannot sell Truth, and be saved. Have mercy therefore on your own souls, for their sakes; for the sake of him, that bought them, with the dear ransom of his precious blood: and, as God hath blessed you with the invaluable treasure of Truth, so hoard it up in your hearts, and manage it in your lives. Oh, let us be gens justa custodiens veritatem; Isaiah xxvi. 2: a just nation keeping fast the Truth: so, while ye keep the Truth, the Truth shall keep you, both in Life, in Death, in Judgment; in life, unto death; in death and judgment, unto the consummation of that endless and incomprehensible glory, which the God of Truth hath prepared for them that

overcome.

To the happy possession whereof, he, that hath ordained, in his good time as mercifully bring us; and that, for the sake of the Son of his Love, Jesus Christ the Righteous: To whom with thee, O Father, and thy Blessed Spirit, One Infinite God, be given all praise, honour, and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON XII.

THE GLORY OF THE LATTER HOUSE:

À SERMON PREACHED AT THE RECONCILEMENT OF THE HAPPILY RESTORED AND REEDIFIED CHAPEL, OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, THE EARL OF EXETER, IN HIS HOUSE OF ST. JOHN'S, ON ST. STEPHEN'S DAY, 1623.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, MY SINGULAR GOOD LADY,

THE LADY ELIZABETH,

COUNTESS OF EXETER.

RIGHT HONOURABLE:

THIS poor Sermon, both preached and penned at your motion, that is to me your command, now presents itself to your hands; and craveth a place, though unworthy, in your cabinet, yea, in your heart. That holy zeal, which desired it, will also improve it. The God, whom your Ladyship hath thus honoured, in the care and cost of his house, will not fail to honour you in yours.

For me, your Honour may justly challenge me on both sides: both by the Druryes, in the right of the first patronage; and by the Cecils, in the right of my succeeding devotions. In either, and both, that little I have, or am, is sincerely at your Ladyship's service, as whom you have merited to be,

Your Honour's,

In all true observance and duty,

JOSEPH HALL.

HAGGAI ii. 9.

The glory of the latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of Hosts; and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of Hosts.

As we have houses of our own, so God hath his: yea, as great men have more houses than one, so hath the great God of Heaven much more: more; both in succession, as here, the latter house, and the first; and in variety. He hath a house of flesh; Ye are the Temples of the Living God: a house of stone; Solomon shall build me a house: a house immaterial, in the heavens; 2 Cor. v. 1.

VOL. V.

Wherefore then hath God a house? Wherefore have we ours, but to dwell in? But doth not he himself tell David, and so doth Stephen the Protomartyr (upon whose days we are fallen) tell the Jews, that He dwells not in Temples made with hands? True, he dwells not in his house, as we in ours, by way of comprehension: he dwells in it, by testification of presence. So do we dwell in our houses, that our houses contain us; that we are only within them, and they without us: so doth he dwell in his, that yet he is elsewhere, yea, every where; that his house is within him. Shortly, God dwells where he witnesses his gracious presence: that, because he doth, both in the empyreal Heaven amongst his angels and saints, and in his Church upon earth; therefore his dwelling is both in the Highest Heaven in perfect glory, and on Earth in the hearts and assembly of his children.

As of the former, our Saviour saith, In domo Patris mei, In my Father's house are many mansions: so also may we say of the latter, There is much variety and choice in it: there was the Church of the Jews, the Church of the Gentiles: there is a material, and a spiritual house: in the one, Solomon's, Zerubbabe's, such piles as this; in the other, so much multiplicity, as there are nations, yea, congregations that profess the Name of Christ. One of these was a figure of the other; the material, under the Law, of the spiritual, under the Gospel.

Ye see now the first house, and the latter; the subject of our text and discourse. The latter, commended to us, Comparatively, Positively: COMPARATIVELY with the former; major gloria: POSITIVELY, in itself; in this place will I give peace: both, set out by the stile of the PROMISER and AVOWER; saith the Lord of Hosts. All which challenge your Christian attention.

I. COMPARATIVELY. As the first house, which was material, was a figure of the second, which is spiritual; so the glory of that material, was a figure of the glory of this spiritual. Now, because all the life, and glory, of the spiritual stands in Christ the Messiah, the Prophet looks through the type of the material, at him which shall beautify, yea glorify the spiritual, of whose exhibition the Prophet speaks; Adhuc modicum, Yet a little while, and I will shake the Heavens. This modicum was but some five hundred and odd years: much to men, but a modicum to the Ancient of Days, with whom a thousand years are but one day. It is in and by him, that this latter house, under the Gospel, shall in glory surpass that first,

under the Law.

The prophets had spoken gloriously of the Temple that should be; and now, lest, when the people should see the homely and cottage-like re-edification of Zerubbabel, they should be disheartened and offended, the Prophet desires to draw their eyes from the stone and timber, to the spiritual inside of the Evangelical Church; shewing the glory of this latter house, to exceed the

former.

Some gross interpreters have looked with Jewish eyes upon the outward fabric, which was threefold; Solomon's, Zerubbabel's,

Herod's: Solomon's, sumptuous and magnificent; Zerubbabel's, mean and homely; Herod's, rich and majestical, immodico sumptu, incredibili splendore, as one says. Solomon's was before defaced. Now, because Zerubbabel was so far from making his word good, that the people wept, when they saw the difference, (which Calvin well observes, was not without a special providence of the all-wise God; else the Jews would so have fixed their eyes upon the outward splendor, that they would never have looked for the spiritual and inward Grace of the House of God:) therefore they have taken it of Herod's temple; the wails and lining whereof were indeed, answerable to this prophecy, more glorious. But this conceit, as it is too carnal, so is it quite dissonant from the context; both in regard of the precedents, and subsequents: of the precedents; for, how did The Desire of all Nations come to that pile of Herod's? of the subsequents; for, what peace was under the Herodian Temple? first, the builder of it was the chief oppressor of the Jewish liberty; and then, secondly, it gave occasion to the perpetual misery of that people. Pilate would expilate the treasures of it for aquæ ducte; which, denied, cost the Jews much blood. Under Claudius, twenty thousand slain in a feast of unleavened bread. Jonathas, the priest, slain by thieves, suborned by Felix, in the very Temple; and, ever after, it was the harbour and spoil of villains. What hills of carcases! What streams of blood were in it at the last vastation! enough to amaze any reader: so as in that seventy-nine years wherein it stood (longer it did not,) it was no better than a stage of Tragedies, a shambles of cruelty. Of that therefore God could not say, Dabo pacem: it was Templum adulterinum, as one calls it justly, and had neither command nor promise. It was the Spiritual Temple, the Evangelical Church, whose glory shall be greater than the Jewish, which shall be blessed with The Desire of the Nations, with the assurance of peace. But why then doth the Holy Ghost speak of gold and silver, the costly materials of an outward structure? Even these very metals are figurative. Not that God cares so much for them, but because we do; because our eyes use to be dazzled with this best parcel of earth: therefore, when he would describe a glorious Church, he borrows the resemblance of gold, silver, precious stones; Isaiah lx and even by these doth he set forth his New and Heavenly Jerusalem; Rev. xxi.

Wherein then is the glory of God's Evangelical House greater, than of the Legal? Yea, wherein is it not greater? Whether ye look to the Efficient, the Matter, the Duration, the Extent, the Service.

The Efficient: that was built by man, though directed by God: in this, God himself is the Architect; not only giving the model, but the frame. The Matter: whether of structure, or ornament: the structure of the one was of stone and wood; of the other, is of living stones: the ornament of the one was gold and silver; of the other, divine graces of faith, charity, hope, sanctity, truth, piety, and all other virtues, to which, gold itself were but trash. The

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