is, not to watch all his attempts and temptations, not to examine all your particular actions, a treaty of peace, that is, to dispute and debate in the behalf and favour of a sin, to palliate, to disguise, to extenuate that sin, this is too near a peace with this serpent, this creeping serpent. But in the other Serpent, the crucified Serpent, God hath reconciled to himself, all things in heaven, and earth, and hell. You have peace in the assistance of the angels of heaven, peace in the contribution of the powerful prayers, and of the holy examples of the saints upon earth, peace in the victory and triumph over the power of hell, peace from sins towards men, peace of affections in yourselves, peace of conscience towards God. From your childhood you have been called upon to hold your peace; to be content is to hold your peace; murmur not at God, in any corrections of his, and you do hold this peace. That creeping serpent, Satan, is war, and should be so; the crucified Serpent Christ Jesus is peace, and shall be so for ever. The creeping serpent eats our dust, the strength of our bodies, in sicknesses, and our glory in the dust of the grave: the crucified Serpent hath taken our flesh, and our blood, and given us his flesh, and his blood for it; and therefore, as David, when he was thought base, for his holy freedom in dancing before the ark", said he would be more base; so, since we are all made of red earth, let him that is red, be more red; let him that is red with the blood of his own soul, be red again in blushing for that redness, and more red in the communion of the blood of Christ Jesus; whom we shall eat all the days of our life, and be mystically, and mysteriously, and spiritually, and sacramentally united to him in this life, and gloriously in the next.

In this state of dust, and so in the territory of the serpent, the tyrant of the dead, lies this dead brother of ours, and hath lain some years, who occasions our meeting now, and yearly upon this day, and whose soul, we doubt not, is in the hands of God, who is the God of the living. And having gathered a good gomer of manna, a good measure of temporal blessings in this life, and derived a fair measure thereof, upon them, whom nature and law directed it upon, (and in whom we beseech God to bless it) hath

33 2 Sam. vi. 14.

also distributed something to the poor of this parish, yearly, this day, and something to a meeting for the conserving of neighbourly love, and something for this exercise. In which, no doubt, his intention was not so much to be yearly remembered himself, as that his posterity, and his neighbours might be yearly remembered to do as he had done. For, this is truly to glorify God in his saints, to sanctify ourselves in their examples; to celebrate them, is to imitate them. For, as it is probably conceived, and agreeably to God's justice, that they that write wanton books, or make wanton pictures, have additions of torment, as often as other men are corrupted with their books, or their pictures: so may they, who have left permanent examples of good works, well be believed, to receive additions of glory and joy, when others are led by that to do the like: and so, they who are extracted, and derived from him, and they who dwelt about him, may assist their own happiness, and enlarge his, by following his good example in good proportions. Amen.

SERMON CXXIX.

PREACHED at st. duNSTAN'S.

LAMENTATIONS iii. 1.

I am the man, that hath seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath.

You remember in the history of the passion of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, there was an Ecce homo, a showing, an exhibiting of that man, in whom we are all blessed. Pilate presented him to the Jews so, with that Ecce homo, Behold the man'. That man upon whom the wormwood and the gall of all the ancient prophecies, and the venom and malignity of all the cruel instruments thereof, was now poured out; that man who was left as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground, without form, or beauty, or comeliness, that we should desire to see him, as the 2 Isaiah Liii. 2.

1 John xix. 5.

But

prophet Esay exhibits him; that man who upon the brightness of his eternal generation in the bosom of his Father, had now cast a cloud of a temporary and earthly generation in the womb of his mother, that man, who, as he entered into the womb of his first mother, the blessed Virgin, by a supernatural way, by the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost, so he vouchsafed to enter into the womb of her, whom he had accepted for his second mother, the earth, by an unnatural way, not by a natural, but by a violent, and bitter death, that man so torn and mangled, wounded with thorns, oppressed with scorns and contumelies, Pilate presents and exhibits so, Ecce homo, Behold the man. in all this depression of his, in all his exinanition, and evacuation, yet he had a crown on, yet he had a purple garment on, the emblems, the characters of majesty were always upon him. And these two considerations, the miseries that exhaust, and evacuate, and annihilate man in this life, and yet, those sparks, and seeds of morality, that lie in the bosom, that still he is a man, the afflictions that depress and smother, that suffocate and strangle their spirits in their bosoms, and yet that unsmotherable, that unquenchable spirit of adoption, by which we cry, Abba, Father, that still he is a Christian, these thorns, and yet these crowns, these contumelies, and yet this purple, are the two parts of this text, I am the man, that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. For, here is an ecce, behold; Jeremy presents a map, a manifestation of as great affliction, as the rod of God's wrath could inflict; but yet it is Ecce homo, Behold the man, I am the man, he is not demolished, he is not incinerated so, not so annihilated, but that he is still a man; God preserves his children from departing from the dignity of men, and from the sovereign dignity of Christian men, in the deluge, and inundation of all afflictions.

And these two things, so considerable in that ecce homo, in the exhibiting of Christ, that then when he was under those scorns, and crosses, he had his crowns, his purples, ensigns of majesty upon him, may well be parts of this text; for, when we come to consider who is the person of whom Jeremy says, I am the man, we find many of the ancient expositors take these words prophetically of Christ himself; and that Christ himself who says,

Others

Behold and see if there be any sorrow, like unto my sorrow3, says here also, I am the man, that hath seen affliction, by the rod of his wrath. But because there are some other passages in this chapter, that are not conveniently appliable to Christ, (it is not likely that Christ would say of himself, That his Father shut out his prayer, even then when he cried and shouted; not likely that Christ would say of himself, That his Father was to him, as a bear in the way, and as a lion in secret places; not likely that Christ would say of himself, That his Father had removed his soul far from peace) therefore this chapter, and this person cannot be so well understood of Christ. Others therefore have understood it of Jerusalem itself; but then it would not be expressed in that sex, it would not be said of Jerusalem, I am the man. understand it of any particular man, that had his part, in that calamity, in that captivity; that the affliction was so universal upon all of that nation of what condition soever, that every man might justly say, Ego vir, I am the man that have seen affliction. But then all this chapter must be figurative, and still, where we can, it becomes, it behoves us, to maintain a literal sense and interpretation of all Scriptures. And that we shall best do in this place, if we understand these words literally of Jeremy himself, that the minister of God, the preacher of God, the prophet of God, Jeremy himself, was the man; the preacher is the text, Ego vir, I am the man: as the ministers of God are most exposed to private contumelies, so should they be most affected with public calamities, and soonest come to say with the apostle, Quis infirmatur, Who is weak, and I am not weak too, who is offended, and I am not affected with it? When the people of God are distressed with sickness, with dearth, with any public calamity, the minister is the first man, that should be compassionate, and sensible of it.

In these words then, (I am the man, &c.) these are our two parts; first the burden, and then the ease, first the weight, and then the alleviation, first the discomfort, and then the refreshing, the sea of afflictions that overflow, and surround us all, and then our emergency and lifting up our head above that sea. In the first we shall consider, first, the generality of afflictions; and that

VOL. V.

3 Lam. i. 12.

42 Cor. xi. 29.

X

first in their own nature, and then secondly in that name of man upon whom they fall here, Gheber, Ego vir, I am the man, which is that name of man, by which the strongest, the powerfulest of men are denoted in the Scriptures; they, the strongest, the mightiest, they that thought themselves safest, and sorrow-proof, are afflicted. And lastly, in the person, upon whom these afflictions are fastened here, Jeremy the prophet, of whom literally we understand this place: the dearliest beloved of God, and those of whose service God may have use in his church, they are subject to be retarded in their service, by these afflictions. Nothing makes a man so great amongst men, nothing makes a man so necessary to God, as that he can escape afflictions. And when we shall have thus considered the generality thereof, these three ways, in the nature of affliction itself, in the signification of that name of exaltation Gheber, and in the person of Jeremy, we shall pass to the consideration of the vehemency and intenseness thereof, in those circumstances that are laid down in our text, first, that these afflictions are ejus, his, the Lord's, and then they are in virga, in his rod, and again, in virga iræ, in the rod of his wrath. And in these two branches, the extent and the weight of afflictions, and in these few circumstances, that illustrate both, we shall determine our first part, the burden, the discomfort. When we shall come at last, to our last part, of comfort, we shall find that also to grow out into two branches; for, first, vidit, he saw his affliction, (I am the man that hath seen affliction) affliction did not blind him, not stupify him, affliction did not make him insensible of affliction, (which is a frequent, but a desperate condition) vidit, he saw it; that is first, and then, ego vir, I am the man that saw it, he maintained the dignity of his station, still he played the man, still he survived to glorify God, and to be an example to other men, of patience under God's corrections, and of thankfulness in God's deliverance. In which last part we shall also see, that all those particulars that did aggravate the affliction in the former part, (that they were from the Lord, from his rod, from the rod of his wrath) do all exalt our comfort in this, that it is a particular comfort that our afflictions are from the Lord, another that they are from his rod, and another also, that they are from the rod of his wrath.