Abraham's seed, i. e. to speak by analogy, to the children of covenanted parents. Abraham is considerable here, as being, under that notion, a father; whosoever of you, therefore, are the children of such, as were of the faith of Abraham, and you are now come to that adult state, wherein you are capable of transacting with God for yourselves, and wherein the transitus is made from minority to maturity; if now you own the God of your fathers, if you will now say, My fathers' God shall be my God; he keeps mercy for thousands of them that love him, and keep his commandments, i. e. if there were a thousand generations of such, (generations being spoken of so immediately before, riz. that he would visit iniquity upon them that hate him, to the third and fourth generation; but show mercy to them that love him, and keep his commandments, unto a thonsand generations, i. e. to never so many,) if you will not, when now grown up, disavow your fathers God, if you will avow and own him, and devote yourselves to him; he will be your God, as well as theirs. Here is now the pri vilege due to Abraham's children, or to the children of covenanted parents. God has an early preventive interest in them, upon which they may lay their claim to him, as their God; if they will but now give up themselves to him, and stand to his covenant. But if you will not do so, but slight and reject the God of your fathers, then your birthprivilege can signify nothing to you; then think not to say with yourselves, We have Abraham to our father, in that third of Matthew's Gospel; for God will never want chil dren, he is able of stones to raise up children to Abraham, q. d. rather stones than you. And then, indeed, upon a true account, Abraham is none of your father, as our Lord Jesus tells the Jews, If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. You do so and so, this did not Abraham, John viii. 39, 40. Pray consider what Abraham was, and how he lived on earth, like an inhab tant of heaven, as an heir of the heavenly country:

may be most assured, if they duly apply themselves. And | vouchsafement and grant, to the children of Abraham, to some encouragement to expect so much they may draw, even from this instance. This infirm woman, in order to bodily cure, did apply herself to him, she came after him, as others did, for this purpose, and did, in a sort, put herself in the way of his healing influence. Now if any of you find your souls are yet held by the devil, in worse bonds; apply yourselves to the merciful compassionate Jesus, there is hope in the case. Oh! will you not say so much to him for a soul in bondage! Lord, loose this poor soul of mine, that Satan hath bound for so many sad years. Do but labour to know you are bound, to feel your bonds. Whatsoever there is of prevailing sin in you, it is a bond, by which the devil holds your souls. The wicked are held in the cords of their own iniquities, Prov. v. 22. And sins are said to be the works of Satan, from which it is the design of the Redeemer to loose us. The Son of God was for this purpose manifested, that he might destroy (we read, it is that he might dissolve) the works of the devil, q. d. that he might release, and unbind souls, that the devil as yet holds in fast bonds. And you may find you are so bound, when upon self-reflection you take notice, you are ordinarily restrained from what you should do, against the light and conviction of your own minds and judgments; i. e. you find, if you reflect, a conviction hath taken place in your consciences that you ought to love God, but there is with you no such motion of soul, no inclination towards him; you ought in a stated course, to pray, and pour out your soul to him, but you are bound, you cannot offer at it, you have no liberty for it, your terrene inclination, or love to vanity, plucks you back: you ought to walk in the ways of God, but you are fettered, you cannot move a foot; you ought to do the works of God, but you are manacled, you cannot stir a hand. Are you so bound, and will you not know it? What! never feel your bonds; when once they are felt, you will soon begin to cry, and supplicate. And if once you shall be brought seriously and incessantly to supplicate, it may be hoped the release will follow.siness was to seek the better country, that is, the heave Was our Lord so compassionate towards infirm bodies, in the days of his flesh in this world; and do we think he, above, is less compassionate to souls? Can it be thought heaven hath altered him to your disadvantage? Is he less kind, benign, and less apt to do good, now he is enthroned in glory? Why should you not believe he will give release unto your captived, embondaged souls, if you implore his help and mercy, with seriousness, and insist upon it, and do not give him over? Say to him, Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me; for do you not know it is his office? The Spirit of the Lord was upon him, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and opening of prisons to them that are bound, Isa. Ixi. 1. What! will you be bound all your days, and never lift up a cry to the great Redeemer and Saviour of souls, to give you release? How deservedly should these bonds end with you in the chains, wherein the devils themselves shall for ever be bound with you?

5. We may collect, there is an awful regard due to the sabbath-day. When our Lord justifies the cure now wrought on their sabbath, only on this account, that it was an act of mercy towards a daughter of Abraham; by the exception of such a case he strengthens the general rule, and intimates so holy a day should not, upon light occasions, be otherwise employed, than for the proper end of its appointment. Though our day be not the same, the business of it, in great part, is; by the reason given in the fourth commandment, which being placed among the rest of those ten words, so many ways remarkably distinguished from the other laws given the Jews, and signifying that these were intended not to them alone, but to mankind, and given upon a reason common to man; the words also not necessarily signifying more, than there should be a seventh day kept as sacred to God, reserving it to after-significations of his pleasure to mark out and signalize this or that day, as he should see fit. And our Saviour having told us expressly, The sabbath was made for man (i. e. as men, not for Jews, as Jews.) These considerations taken together, with many more, (not fit to be here mentioned,) do challenge a very great regard to the day, which we have cause to think it is the will of God we should keep as our sabbath. 6. That there is somewhat of privilege due, by gracious

*The posy on their wedding ring,

his bu

ly; wherefore God was not ashamed to be called his God; as in that eleventh to the Heb. ver. 16. But if you wil go from day to day grovelling in the dust of the earth, this did not Abraham. If you will spend your lives in the parsuit of vanity and trifles, this did not Abraham. Theres a great privilege belonging by Gospel grant unto the chil dren of covenanted parents, if they do not forfeit it, by glecting and practically disavowing their fathers' God.

7. But I further infer hence, that since this compassion has a real, though not a principal, hand in the release that is given to them that belong to God, in whatsoever way they are released, from all their infirmities, and ails, and afflictions in this world; it very much becomes, and much concerns, all the children of Abraham patiently to wat for it, in God's own way. Patiently, I say, in God's o way wait for it. The children of Abraham shall be loosened sooner or later, and in one way or other, though very long though so many years bound by such and such afflicting distempers. You have a great instance of this kind in that daughter of Abraham, whom God hath called away from us. In all that long exercise, the main thing she was ever wont to insist upon, was, that in all this affliction she might gain patience, submission, and instruction. And in her later time, when she drew nearer to eternity, was more in view of it, that was the great subject wherewith sheentertained herself, and was conversant much with somewhat more lately written upon that subject, as by Mr. Shower, (now known to most of you,) and by another author. And her last entertainment, as I have been told, (as to helps from creatures in any such kind,) was the repetition of what some of you have heard concerning the Immanuel, wherewith she formerly pleased herself, as being, it is likely, much habituated in the temper of her spirit to the thoughts of him: that having, by agreement with her pi ous consort, been their motto, b at their first coming together, Immanuel, God with us.

and even

8.' I shall only add one instruction more, to shut up all, that since our Lord Jesus hath such an agency, with compassion, in the release of those that do belong to him, from their afflicting infirmities; we should all of us labour with a due and right frame, and disposition of spirit,

A DISCOURSE

RELATING TO THE MUCH LAMENTED DEATH AND SOLEMN FUNERAL

OF QUEEN MARY.

MADAM,

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE RACHEL, LADY RUSSEL.

I CAN be at no loss for inducements to prefix your Ladyship's name to this discourse. I know the subject is grateful you, and if I only give you the occasion hereby of revolving in your mind this sublime context, you will entertain yourself from it, with more enlarged and exalted thoughts, than this discourse, especially confined within so narrow limits, can suggest.

And your Ladyship knows so much of the incomparable queen, that you can the more easily believe the rest. 1 reckon you, Madam, a great frequenter of that assembly above, to which she is now adjoined. You have, besides the greater attractives that are common to all serious Christians, a very peculiar one, to draw your mind often thither. A joint-root with you is there by transplantation, and a noble branch, from you both, and in whom two illustrious families meet, is, under your care, shooting upwards also. All indeed that have true honour for him, will earnestly covet be may be long serviceable to the most valuable purposes, in this world; and that, by the blessing of heaven upon has approaching nuptials, (with one from whom may be expected all that so sweet and tender a bud, now beginning to open, can promise,) he may, in due time, spread forth many branches, that may flourish here; but it is to be hoped he will be found to have a greater mind, than can be confined to so low and little a thing as this earth is.

The thought may much the better be digested, that terrestrial nuptials will some time end in funerals; if once, by God's prescribed methods, it can be made certain to us also, that those funerals shall end in celestial triumphs. Your Ladyship's eyes (which better serve for heaven than earth) being observedly much directed upward, will give aim and direction to theirs, who depend upon you, to look the same way; and withal draw down from thence con tinual blessings upon yourself, and them.. Which is the serious desire, and hope of,

Madam,

LET me invite back your eye to the foregoing words, that | and a judicious eye. Honours done to the memory of are in nearer connexion with these. Ver. 22. But ye are great persons deceased have, by the wisdom of all nations, come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, (ver. 23.) to the general assembly, and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.

We have had this last week a public solemnity, that was becomingly great and magnificent, upon a sad and mournful occasion, the last act of a doleful scene that hath lasted many weeks. You know I have taken notice to you (my usual hearers) of the first, and saddest, the leading part in this tragedy, once and again; nor would I have this last to pass us, without some instructive observation and remark. It will the more instruct us, the less it detains us; or if only taking a due (not, I mean, a slight and too hasty, but yet a transient) notice of it, we be prompted by it to look forward, from what was in its own kind most deservedly great, to what is incomparably greater, in a

more excellent kind.

In such a funeral solemnity, for so great and excellent a personage, there is what may most fitly entertain awhile; there is not that which ought finally to terminate a wise

been counted decencies, and even debts; when especially the deceased have been sometime, and might have bees much longer, public blessings: then indeed it is that such rites are most fitly (as they are usually) called justa. Bi we are too prone to be taken only with the mere pomp of such spectacles, and, which is the infirmity of our too de generate spirits, to be wholly possessed with fanciful ideas; Acts xxv. 23. as those were intimated to be, which were from a spectacle of the same common kind, though on very diverse occasion, by that elegant expression, ons pavracias, such as do but amuse our imagination awhile, but must of course vanish, and cannot stay long with us. But we need that somewhat greater, and to latent to strike our eye, should another way enter, and teach our mind; making such impressions there, as may claim an abode, and that ought to remain, and dwell with us. You read of a very solemn funeral, Gen. 1. The whole country into which the march was made, was amused at the state and greatness of that mournful cavalcade, wherein 'tis said, ver. 9. there were chariots, and horsemen, even a very great company. That which you have many of you so lately seen, and no doubt all of you heard of,

was a most august funeral solemnity; such as whereof mourning, with greater and more decent majesty in retireless concerned foreign spectators might say, as the Canaan-ment, or being (as is usual in solemn mournings) hid and ites by mistake did of that, ver. 11. This is a grievous covered on that day. So was the whole legislature conmourning to the Egyptians. cerned in that sorrow, as if it were ordained by statute, or as if our mourning were as that for an excellent prince also (2 Chron. xxxv. 25.) by an ordinance in our Israel; and as if our tears and lamentations were, as before they were by merit, to be also made due by law! Death marched in state and triumph that day, the king of terrors took the throne, and filled that part which it had made vacant, having plucked away from thence not only so bright an ornament, but so glorious an instrument, in our government; and all the orders of the realm, as captives, attended the chariot of the conqueror. England had lost its delight, its pleasant comeliness, and even half its soul. Nothing could correspond to such a case, but a national groan, as of a half-expiring kingdom, ready almost to breathe its last, and give up the ghost.

They were indeed anciently the most celebrated mourners, for such as died from amongst them, in all the world, in respect of their funeral rites, and of their monuments for the dead, of which they are said to have taken more care than of the habitations of the living; accounting these they were to inhabit only a short time, but those they reckoned their aïdies dixus, their eternal habitations. An imagination, which how wild soever it were, of the habitations of souls, (which only could be supposed capable of being pleased with them,) yet implied their belief of their immortality, whereof some have, groundlessly, thought them the first assertors. But the Canaanites were, as was intimated, mistaken in apprehending that to be chiefly an Egyptian mourning. The true Israelites (those that were such indeed) were the true, concerned mourners. The father of Israel was dead, as now with us, the mother. A political, though not a natural, nor merely an economical one: a mother, not in the narrower and more minute, but in the larger and most noble sense; not of a single family only, but of nations. The Egyptians assisted to make up the show in that mourning, but were probably the prepared (as their posterity were the active) instruments of the slavery and misery of that people; with whom they were now seeming sharers in lamentation.

Ours was a mourning not less grievous than theirs, nor more grievous than just to the English nation, i. e. to whom the soil and the genius are together native, that are not of an Egyptian spirit. Unto which, as things happen, (to its power, or to its impotency,) there is a radical innate disposition, either to make slaves, or to be such. There is a sort of people (as was once said) born to slavery, to whom it is a birthright. They have it in their natures, and no other state, as he most aptly spake, is agreeable or becoming to them; Quos non decet esse nisi servos. They know not what to do with liberty, any more than that silly creature that used to haunt the dunghill, with the pearl. Therefore they can but suitably value the restorers and assertors of it. No irons can be heavier, or less tolerable to them, than a generous and a Christian state of freedom. Therefore if none else will do them the kind office to put them into gentler shackles, they grow so unnaturally cruel, as to shackle themselves, in the ignoblest sort of bondage. Prov. v. 22. They are held in the cords of their own sins, and make the chain, whereby they are to be dragged.d Brutish appetites and inclinations are to them severer taskmasters, than it can ever be in their power to become to others. They can themselves, at the utmost, but domineer over other men's externals; but these have subdued their wills, and tyrannize in their very minds.

It must be confessed, our just tribute to the memory of our admirable queen can never be said to be fully paid; nor can this discourse leave out occasional reflections that may be of this import. But my present design is to endeavour our minds may be drawn upwards, and to make that improvement of this most instructive providence, unto which this chosen text will direct. Not to entertain you with her character, and praises (for it is the same thing to characterize, and to praise her:) that part is performed in divers excellent discourses, which I have read, as I believe many of you have, and I hope with fruit as well as approbation; and (as there is cause) with great admiration of the Divine goodness, that so illustriously shone forth in her, and that vouchsafed, so long, to intrust the people of England with so rare a jewel, whose lustre was yet exceeded by its real virtues. By which also we may make our estimate of the displeasure wherewith it is so soon withdrawn, and caught away from us, so as to entertain the age (as our divine Herbert) with-a mirth but opened, and shut up again—a burning and a shining light, (for so she also was in a true sense, and in her proper sphere,) in the light whereof we rejoiced but a season.

But every such providence hath its dark side and its bright. View it downward as it looks upon us who remain beneath, and we behold blackness, and darkness, and a horrible tempest. Such a state of things we may fear our queen hath left unto us who stay below, while we do so. But look we upon it upwards, whither she is ascended, and whither we are professedly tending, and are in some sort come, if we be followers of them who through faith and patience have inherited the promises; and we find 'tis to mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. And hither (that we may fetch instruction out of terror, out of the eater meat, and life out of death) let us bend and apply ourselves.

Thus 'tis with them in relation to their governing, and their being governed; and their policy and religion come both out of the same mint. To them this season of sorrow is a time of festivity and laughter, who, when they have suffered a more monstrous transformation themselves, can We have had a mournful sad solemnity and assembly, easily turn the house of mourning into that of mirth, Eccl. though decently pompous and great; England's glory clad vii. 4. The wise man tells us what sort of people they are, in sables, and glittering in a cloud. But now let us lift up whose heart is in this latter house; and what is to be our eye, and endeavour it may penetrate through this darkthought of such mirth and laughter, chap. ii. 2. And in-ness, and behold the glorious spectacle which this context deed without a serious repentance (by which men do resipiscere, or become wise) theirs is like to prove the Sardonic laughter, a certain prelude to death and ruin.

But 'tis to be hoped, this sort of men do dwindle into a not much regardable paucity. The current of the nation runs against them, which must turn and constrain them to fall in with it. For, we had upon the late sad occasion a panegyris. We find that word in the introductive part of the text, and though it is more commonly applied to a multitude, gathered on other occasions, it disagrees not to that orderly great concourse on that mournful occasion, a general assembly, that is, a national one, met then on purpose to mourn; a nation assembled, and mourning in their representative. It was decent it should be so, a loss so national, so general a sorrow were with no congruity otherwise to be represented and expressed. Our mourning was therefore by all the estates of the kingdom, the head only

a Diod. Sic. i. 1.

b Herod. Euterp.

presents us with. Funeral solemnities, even for pious and holy persons, and that were of greatest use in the world, are dull and gloomy spectacles, if they are only considered in their retrospection, without prospect; or if they only solemnize their exit out of this world of ours, but be understood to have no reference to their ascent and entrance into the regions of immortality and bliss above. And, without this, we see ourselves outdone by the Egyptians themselves, with whom their funeral apparatus had reference to a subsequent immortality.

These words are allusive, and promiscuously refer, partly to things known and famous among the Greeks, but are more principally accommodated to these Christian Israelites, or Hebrews, to whom they are writ (and in a scheme of speech, familiar and well known to them) have respect to their passage out of Egypt (as the 3d and 4th chapters of this epistle also have) towards the land of their promised

These

inheritance, whereof the remains of their venerable ances-Lord, displaying his glory perpetually before them, and tor and head, holy Jacob, or Israel, had by divine instinct making his rich immense goodness diffuse itself, and flow and direction, in that mentioned solemn funeral procession, in rivers of pleasure most copiously among them! been conveyed before, to take a sort of typical and pro- The church of the first-born written in heaven. phetical prepossession of it for them. They are in the whole a figure, an allegory, which is expounded, Gal. iii. In their way to their terrestrial Canaan, this people come to mount Sinai. The emblem of their Jewish church state, under rigorous severities, which they were to pass from; and so shall we. The text expresses what they were come and were tending to, the representation whereof hath a double reference, intermediate to the state and constitution of the Christian church, and final to the heavenly state; the former being both a resemblance and some degree of the latter.

e

all constitute but one church, of whatsoever orders those blessed spirits are. And they are all said to be first-born, the church here meant consisting only of such, in whom the divine life, or the holy living image of God, hath place; they having all the privileges which did belong to the firstborn, the inheritance, the principality, and the priesthood: for all God's sons are also heirs, Rom. viii. 17. And they are all made kings and priests, (Rev. i. 6.) having all their crowns, which they often cast down before the supreme King; and their employment being perpetual oblation of praise, adoration, and all possible acknowledgments to him. They are all of excellent dignity, and every one enrolled so that none have a place there, by oversight, casualty, or intrusion. We must here understand an allusion to what citizens need not be told, the known custom of registering such as were civitate donati, or made free. And to God the Judge of all. This may have reference to that office of the judge in the olympic concertations, to whom it belonged to determine who were victors, and to whom the garlands or crowns were justly due. Here the privilege is, that they whose cause is to be tried, are sure of righteous judgment, and that they may approach the enthroned Majesty of heaven itself. None of them are denied liberty of access to the throne of glory above, as in the Christian church none are to the throne of grace below. And to the spirits of just men made perfect. This shows they all make but one church, even such spirits as have dwelt in flesh, being received into the communion of those whose dwelling never was with flesh. And, in the mean time, those that yet continue in these low earthly stations, as soon as the principles of the divine life have community; for they are said to be already come thereto, and all together compose but one family. For there is but one paterfamilias, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is said to be named, Ephes. iii. 15. Now for the encouragement of Christians unto a faithful perseverance, through all the difficulties of this their present con

Ye are come (saith he) to mount Sion, the seat of the sacred temple, the shechinah, the habitation of the Divine presence, not ambulatory, as the tabernacle was, while they were journeying through the wilderness, but the fixed residence of the eternal King, where the order of worship was to be continued, to the fulness of time; as afterwards in the Christian church it was to be permanent and unchanged to the end of time; and in the heavenly state unalterable and eternal. And here, in opposition to the case at mount Sinai, where the people were to stay beneath the mount, (whereas they were to go up to the house of God, on mount Sion,) they are now to ascend, and be higher than heaven, as their glorious Head and Lord is said to be, Heb. vii. 26. to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to signify the vicinity wherein God will have his people be to him, as Jerusalem was to Sion, their houses and dwellings being near to his own, the city to the temple. And this passage may also look back upon their former state; whereas they had heretofore nothing but wilderness, they had now a city. To which that also agrees, Heb. x. 16. Their earlier progenitors were wander-place in them, belong, and are related, to that glorious ers and strangers even in Canaan itself, but now God had prepared for them a city in the heavenly Canaan, as before he did in the earthly. But lest their minds should stay in the external sign, he lets them know he means the heavenly Jerusalem, i. e. the Christian church, which was the kingdom of heaven begun; and heaven itself, as being that kingdom, in its final and consummate state. To an in-flicting, imperfect state, is this glorious representation made numerable company of angels, pupiát, which, though in the singular it signifies a definite number, being here put plurally, may well be understood to signify indefinitely a numberless multitude: or whereas some selected squadrons might only attend the solemnity of giving the law at mount Sinai, here is the whole heavenly host, whose stated office it is to guard the church below, and worship the Majesty of heaven above. To the general assembly, the Tavhyvois the glorious consessus of all orders of blessed spirits; which as it may be supposed constant, at all times, so is as supposable to be more frequented and solemn at some, and whither any may resort, as quick as the glance of an eye or a thought; and perhaps do at appointed seasons, so as to make more solemn appearances before the throne of God, as the laws and usages of that blessed world shall require. And we may well understand here an allusion to the appointed times, at which there was a resort from all parts of Judea to Jerusalem; and as in the Christian church are, at set seasons, more numerous and solemn assemblies. Here may also be an allusion to the Panathenaica, the more general conventions of all the people of Athens, upon some solemn occasions, which were wont to be called ravnyvpss. These can be referred to but as faint resemblances and shadows (whether they were the Jewish or the Grecian assemblies) of this universal convention, that fills the vast expanse of heaven; in comparison whereof not only this little earth of ours, but the whole vortice to which it belongs, can be considered but as a very minute spot or point. The inhabitants that people those immense, pure, and bright regions, in their grand, stated, solemn assembly, make the term to which holy souls, ascending from among us, are continually coming. And here with what ineffable pleasure must these pure celestial intelligences, all filled with light, wisdom, life, benignity, love, and joy, converse with one another; behold, reverence, love, worship, and enjoy their sovereign e 'AvWTсpoι Tov oupavov. Chrys. in loc.

of the blessed issue their labours and sufferings shall have
at last. Whither they shall be gathered at the finishing of
their course, and how God-like, how worthy of himself, the
end shall be, into which he will run up all things, when the
state of probation and preparation is over with his intelli-
gent creatures, and the stable, permanent, eternal state
comes to take place; which, because it is final, can admit
no more changes, and because it is perfect, can no more
need any. Hither Christians are to come, and in some
sense the sincere are said to be come already.
upon this part of the term of their access, viz. that they
are come to "the spirits of the just made perfect," we are
to stay awhile, and shall consider,

And now

I. The perfection the spirits of the just do finally arrive to, in their future state.

II. In what sense sincere Christians, in their present state, can be said to be come to them, who are so made perfect.

I. For the former of these, we may easily admit this being made perfect to be an agonistical phrase, as some of great note and worth have expounded it; and unto which that in the beginning of this chapter, of running the race set before us, (q. d. the way laid out between the lines on each hand,) doth plainly lead us. But it should hereupon be remote from us to think, that a mere relative dignity, or any external honours, are the things we must principally understand to be conferred, or which these adepti must be now thought to have obtained. 'Tis a real, inward, subjective perfection, by which they all become most excellent creatures, that must be chiefly meant. Perfection, taken in the moral sense, doth, in the language of the Holy Scriptures, contain a threefold gradation.

First, At the lowest, sincerity; as when our Saviour proposes to that querist, Matt. xix. 21. If he would be perfect, to sell all he had, and give to the poor, following him, with the expectation of no other recompense but of a treaf Έκει έρημος ενταυθα πολις. Id. ibid.