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tom of the deep, to be a parlour for whales and sea-monsters. There lay the Pride of Spain, the Terror of England. And is the hand of our God shortened? Is he other than what he was? We may be, as we are, weakened and effeminated by a long, luxurious peace: our God is yesterday, and to day, and the same for ever. If we be not wanting to him in our Prayers, he cannot be wanting to our Protection.

Look up to him, O Dear Christians, that is the God of our Salvation. Behold, the Lions out of their reeds, the Bulls out of their forests, and these in-banded multitudes conspire against us; and the misled Calves of the people are apt enough to back their attempts. Neither is this a fair hostility: our enemies are those, that hate peace, and delight in war; offering insolent provocations to our State, in dis-inheriting part of the Royal Issue, violating their faiths, maintaining their unjust affronts, ambitiously aspiring to undue sovereignty. What shall we then do? O put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, whose breath is in their nostrils. O put not your trust, ye Princes and Peers, in your sword, in your how; in your powers and confederacies. Trust only to the great God of Hosts, who alone can but blow upon all the proudest preparations of your enemies, and scatter them to the lowest hell. Come to him in your humble devotions, with an Increpa and Dissipa; he shall soon make your enemies to lick the dust.

But what shall I say, Honourable and Beloved? We have prayed, and have not been heard; and thou, O Lord, hast not of late gone forth with our hosts: yea, thou hast rebuked us, instead of our enemies. Alas! we can more grieve, than wonder, at this issue.

Israel, in the hot chase of all their victory, is foiled, more than once, by a Canaanite. Whence was this? There was a pad in the straw, an Achan in the camp. Theft and sacrilege fought against Israel, more than the men of Ai: the wedge of gold wounded them, more than the enemy's steel: the Babylonish garment disarmed and stripped them. Israel had sinned, and must flee.

Alas, my Brethren, what do we pray for victory over our enemies, when our sins, which are our deadliest enemies, conquer us? To what purpose are our prayers loud, when our sins are fouder? To what purpose are our bodies this day empty, if our souls be full of wickedness? While we provoke God to his face, with our abominable licentiousness, with our fearful profanations, with our outrageous lives, how do we think to glaver with him in our formal devotions? What cares he, for our smooth tongues, when our hearts are filthy? what cares he, for an elevated eye, when our souls are depressed to vile lusts? what cares he, for the calves of our lips, when the iniquity of our heels compasses us about? The very sacrifice of the wicked is abomination to the Lord: his very prayer is turned into sin, even that whereby he hopes to expiate it. Oh, that my people had hearkened to me, and Israel had walked in my ways, saith God: I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries: The haters of the Lord

should have submitted themselves to him; but their time should have endured for ever; Psalm lxxxi. 13, 14, 15.

Oh then, cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purge your hearts, ye double-minded: wash your hands in innocence, and then compass the altar of God. Then shall the God of our righteousness hear in his holy heavens, and rise up mightily for our defence. Then shall he be a wall of brass about our island. Then shall he wound the head of our enemies, and make the tongues of our dogs red with their blood. Then shall he cover our heads in the day of battle; and make this nation of ours victoriously glorious to the ends of the world, even to all ages and times. Then shall he be known to be our God, and we shall be known to be his people for ever. Which he, of his infinite mercy, vouchsafe to grant us, for the sake of the Son of his Love, Jesus Christ the Righteous: To whom, &c.

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SERMON XVIII.

THE BEAUTY AND UNITY OF THE CHURCH:

IN A SERMON PREACHED AT WHITEHALL.

CANTICLES vi. 9.

My Dove, my Undefiled is One.

OUR last day's discourse was, as you heard, of War and Dissipa tion this shall be of Love and Unity.

Away with all profane thoughts: every syllable in this BridalSong is Divine, Who doubts that the Bridegroom is Christ, the Bride his Church? the Church, whether at large in all the faithful, or abridged in every faithful soul.

Christ the Bridegroom praises the Bride, his Church, for her Beauty, for her Entireness. For her Beauty, she is Columba, A Dove; she is perfecta, undefiled. Her Entireness is praised by her Propriety in respect of him, Columba mea, My Dove; by her Unity in respect of herself, Una, One alone. My Dove, my Undefiled is but One. So as the BEAUTIFUL SINCERITY, the DEAR PROPRIETY, the INDIVISIBLE UNITY of the whole Church in common, and of the epitome thereof every Regenerate Soul, is the matter of my Text, of my speech. Let your holy attention follow me, and find yourselves in every particular.

I. The two first titles, Columba and perfecta, are in effect but one. This creature hath a pleasing BEAUTY, and an innocent SIMPLICITY: Columba imports the one, and perfecta the other; yea, each both for what is the Perfection which can be attained here, but Sincerity? and what other is our honest Sincerity, than those graceful proportions and colours which make us appear Lovely in the eyes of God?

The undefiled then interprets the Dove; and convertibly for, therefore is the Church undefiled, because she is a Dove: she is, as Christ bade her, anéga, innocent; Matt. x. 16. and therefore is she Christ's Dove, because she is undefiled with the gall of spiritual bitterness.

Would ye rather see these graces apart? Look then, first, at the Loveliness; then, at the Harmlessness, of the Church, of the Soul.

1. Every thing in the Dove is AMIABLE; her eyes; Cant. i. 15: her feathers; Psalm lxviii. 13: and what not? So is the Church in the eyes of Christ: and therefore the Vulgate translation puts

both these together, Columba mea, formosa mea; My dove, my fair one; Cant. ii. 10. which Lucas Brugensis confesses not to be in the Hebrew, yet adds, Ne facilè omittas.

Thy Dove, O God? Yea, why not thy Raven rather? I am sure she can say of herself, I am black: and, if our own hearts condemn us, thou art greater. Alas! what canst thou see in us but the pustules of corruption, the morphews of deformity, the hereditary leprosy of sin, the pestilential spots of death? And dost thou say, My Dove, my undefiled? Let malice speak her worst. The Church says she is black; but she says she is comely and that is fair, that pleaseth. Neither doth God look upon us with our eyes, but with his own: He sees not as man seeth. The king's daughter is all glorious within: finite eyes reach not thither. The skin-deep beauty of earthly faces, is a fit object for our shallow sense, that can see nothing but colour.

Have ye not seen some pictures, which, being looked on one way, shew some ugly beast or bird; another way, shew an exquisite face? Even so doth God see our best side, with favour; while we see our worst, with rigour.

Not that his justice sees any thing, as it is not; but that his mercy will not see some things, as they are. Blessed is the man, whose sin is covered; Psalm xxxii. 1. If we be foul; yet thou, O Saviour, art glorious. Thy Righteousness beautifies us, who are blemished by our own corruptions.

But what? shall our borrowed beauty blemish, the while, thine infinite Justice? Shall we taint thee, to clear ourselves? Dost thou justify the wicked? Dost thou feather the Raven with the wings of the Dove? While the cloth is fair, is the skin nasty? Is it no more, but to deck a blackmore with white? Even with the long white robes which are the justifications of saints? God forbid! Cursed be he, O Lord, that makes thy mercies unjust. No; whom thou accountest holy, thou makest so: whom thou justifiest, him thou sanctifiest. No man can be perfectly just in thee, who is not truly, though unperfectly, holy in himself.

Whether therefore, as fully just by thy gracious imputation, or as inchoately just by thy gracious inoperation, we are in both thy Dove, thy Undefiled. In spite of all the blemishes of her outward administrations, God's Church is beautiful: in spite of her inward weaknesses, the faithful Soul is comely: in spite of both, each of them is a dove, each of them undefiled. It is with both, as he said long since of physicians, "The sun sees their successes, the earth hides their errors." None of their unwilling infirmities can hinder the God of Mercies from a gracious allowance of their integrity; Behold, thou art all fair.

But let no idle Donatist of Amsterdam dream hence of an Utopical perfection. Even here is the Dove still: but Columba seducta, or fatua (as Tremellius reads it) Ephraim; Ephraim is a silly, seduced Dove; Hos. vii. 11. The rifeness of their familiar excommunications, may have taught them to seek for a spotlessness above. And if their furious censures had left but one man in

their Church, yet that one man would have need to excommunicate the greater half of himself, the old-man in his own bosom. Our Church may too truly speak of them, in the voice of God, Woe to them, for they have fled from me; Hos. vii. 13. It is not in the power of their uncharity, to make the rest of God's Church, and ours, any other than what it is, the Dove of Christ, the undefiled.

2. The HARMLESSNESS follows. A quality so eminent in the dove, that our Saviour hath hereupon singled it out for a hieroglyphic of Simplicity. Whence it was, questionless, that God, of all fowls, chose out this for his sacrifice: Sin ex aliquá volucri; Lev. i. 14. And, before the Law, Abraham was appointed no other, Gen. xv. 9. than a turtle and a pigeon: neither did the Holy Virgin offer any other, at her Purifying, than this emblem of herself and her Blessed Babe. Shortly, hence it was that a dove was employed for the messenger of the exsiccation of the Deluge: no fowl so fit to carry an olive of peace to the Church, which she represented. And, lastly, in a dove the Holy Ghost descended upon the meek Saviour of the World: whence, as Illyricus and some an. cients have guessed, the sellers of doves were whipped out of the Temple, as Simoniacal chafferers of the Holy Ghost.

The Church then is a Dove. Not an envious Partridge, not a careless Ostrich, not a stridulous Jay, not a petulant Sparrow, not a deluding Lapwing, not an unclean-fed Duck, not a noisome Crow, not an unthankful Swallow, not a death-boding Screech-Owl; but a harmless Dove, that fowl, in which alone envy itself can find nothing to tax.

Hear this then, ye Violent Spirits, that think there can be no piety that is not cruel; the Church is a Dove: not a Glead, not a Vulture, not a Falcon, not an Eagle, not any Bird of Prey or Rapine. Whoever saw the rough foot of the Dove armed with griping talons? Whoever saw the beak of the Dove bloody? Whoever saw that innocent bird pluming of her spoil, and tyring upon bones?

Indeed, we have seen the Church crimson-suited, like her celestial Husband; of whom the Prophet, Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? And straight, Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel, and thy garment like him that treadeth in the wine-press? Isaiah lxiii. 1, 2: but it hath been with her own blood, shed by others; not with others' blood, shed by her hand, She hath learned to suffer, what she hateth to inflict.

Do ye see any faction with knives in their hands, stained with massacres; with firebrands in their hands, ready to kindle the unjust stakes, yea woods of martyrdom; with pistols and poniards in their hands, ambitiously affecting a canonization by the death of God's Anointed; with matches in their hands, ready to give fire unto that powder which shall blow up King, Prince, State, Church; with thunderbolts of censures, ready to strike down into hell whosoever refuses to receive novel opinions into the Articles of Faith? If ye find these dispositions and actions Dove-like, applaud them, as be

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