VI. all our failings,—we might certainly reap better fruit of our SER M. time, be fairer proficients in this art of purging; and in the mean may spend our spirits most profitably in calling and hastening one another to this so possible, and withal so necessary, task; and that is the last particular, that it ought to be the united design of all Christians, the Apostle and people together, to aid and assist one another in this work of purifying, by entreaties, by exhortations, by all the engagements of love and duty; Kalapitwμev avтoùs, "let us cleanse ourselves." The work, it is acknowledged, though possible to be gone through with, in such a measure as shall be sure of acceptance, is yet of some more than ordinary difficulty. How long hath this poor nation been about it? So many years in the refiner's fire, in God's furnace for purifying, worn out and rent to pieces under the fuller's soap; and yet, God knows, as full of dross and spots as ever, the poor leper-kingdom thrust out of the camp,-the temple,-banished from the old privileges of the Israelite, the oracle and the service of God, God spitting in the face of it, in Moses' style,—a kind of excommunicate state,-all on that charitable purpose, that it might be ashamed and apply itself to the priest, to God for His purgatives; I shall add, looked upon, prayed over by that priest so many years together; and that cure still as far from being perfected as ever, the leprosy spreading in the skin, the sins multiplying under the priest's inspection, under God's rod; at the end of a seven years' rinsing,-not with soap, but nitre,-a thousand times more odious spots, more provoking sins, more hellish impurities, than before. I remember what poor Porphyry was fain to do in pursuit of purgatives, the same that Saul after the commission of his sin that rent the kingdom from him, betake himself es θεουργίαν καὶ γοητείαν, to magic and conjuring, make friends to the devil to help purify him. O that we, having met with luckier prescriptions,-recipes from heaven, that would be sure to prove successful,-would not betray all, for want of applying them, that while it is called to-day, while a poor spotted kingdom lies a gasping, the benefit of the last plunge, the pureis inтpai, might not be quite let slip, that this of purifying, the only true expedient yet untried,-whilst VI. [Ps. cxxii. 1.] SER M. all others are experimented to be but mere empirical state mountebankery,-might at length be thought on, prosecuted with some vigour, every man entering into the retirement of his own breast, there to search and view the spotted patient, [1 Kings the plague, the leprosy of his own heart! and again, every viii. 38.] man making his arts of cure as communicative and diffusive, as charitable and catholic as he can; that as David was ravished with joy, when they said unto him, "Let us go into the house of the Lord,"-that pleasant news and spectacle, a conspiration for piety,-so we for that only errand that sends us all to that house, the beginning and advancing of purity; every man, like an Israelite in his flight from Egypt, not only going out in haste,—a passover toward purity,—but also despoiling his Egyptian neighbours, robbing one of his lusts, another of his detractions, one of his atheistical oaths, another of his swinish excesses, one of his infidel tremblings and basenesses, another of his covetings and ambitions, his jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiments, his most valued precious sins,-the curses with which he hath clothed himself as with a garment, and which would one day, if they were not snatched from him, come like scalding water into his bowels, and oil into his bones, and so yet, if it be possible, come out a troop, a legion of naked wrestlers, a whole shoal of candidates toward purity. Till somewhat be done this way, more than hitherto hath been done, peace may hover over our heads, express its willingness to light upon us; but ad candida tecta columbæ, that dove will not enter or dwell where purity hath not prepared for her: or if she should so unlearn her own humour, it were danger she would turn vulture, that most desirable blessing prove our fatallest curse, leave us in and to a state of all impurities, to deprecate and curse those mercies that had betrayed us to such irreversible miseries. Lord, purge, Lord, cleanse us; do Thou break those vessels of ours that will not be purified; cast us again into what furnace Thou pleasest, that we may at length leave our dross, our filth behind us: and having used Thine own methods toward this end, and purged our eyes to see that it is Thou that hast thought this necessary for us, that hast of very mercy, very fidelity thus caused us to be troubled, work in us that purity here, which may make us VI. capable of that vision, that peace, that fulness of sanctity SERM. and glory hereafter; which God of His infinite abyss of purity grant us all; to Whom, with the Son, that image of His Father's purity, and the holy, sanctifying, purifying Spirit, &c. SERMON VII. BEING A LENT SERMON AT oxford, a.d. 1643. CHRIST AND BARABBAS. SERM. VII. [Wisd. ii. 12, 14.] JOHN Xviii. 40. Not this Man, but Barabbas. THIS passage of story not unagreeable to the time,-every day of Lent being а πρожаρаσкevǹ to the passion week,—hath much of the present humour of the world in it, whether we consider it as an act of censure, or as an act of choice: both these it is here in the Jews. 1. An act of popular censure, i. e. most perfect injustice, very favourable to the robber, and very severe to Christ; Barabbas may be released, the vilest wretch in the world, one that was attached for robbery and for insurrection, may become the people's favourite, be pitied and pleaded for, and absolutely pardoned: dat veniam corvis", the blackest devils in hell shall pass without any of our malice, our indignation, our animosities; but an innocent Christ, or any of His making, one that comes from heaven to us, upon errands of holiness, of reformation, that by authority of His doctrine and example would put vice out of countenance, discover our follies, or reproach our madnesses, and in the Wise Man's phrase, "upbraid our ways, and reprove our thoughts," He that hath no sins to qualify Him for our acquaintance, no oaths, no ribaldry to make him good company, none of the compliances or vices of the times to commend him to our friendship, at least to our pardon, none of that new kind of popularity of being as debauched and professedly vicious as other men, shall a [Juv. ii. 63.] VII. Wisd. ii. 15.· be suspected, and feared, and hated, the most odious, unpar- SER M. donable, unsufferable neighbour, "grievous unto us even to behold." Innocence is become the most uncomely degenerous quality, virtue the most envious, censorious thing; the not being so near hell as other men, the most ridiculous scrupulosity, and folly in the world. And the misery of it is, there is no discoursing, no reasoning this humour out of us, they had cried once before, and the crossing doth but more inflame them; the charm, that should have exorcised, doth but enrage the evil spirit, "Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas." But besides this, I told you, these words might be taken in another notion, and under that it is that we are resolved to handle them, as an act of the Jews' choice, of their absolute unconditionate decree, their loving of Barabbas, and hating of Jesus, not before they had done either good or evil, but after [Rom. ix. one had done all the evil, the other all the good imaginable; 11, 13.] then hating the Jacob, and loving the Esau; electing the robber, and rejecting the Saviour; the Barabbas becomes a Barabbas indeed, according to the origination of the name, a son of a father, a beloved son in whom they are well pleased, a chosen vessel of their honour, and Christ the only refuse vessel of dishonour, the only unamiable, undesirable, formless, beautiless reprobate in the mass: Non hune, sed Barabbam, "Not this man," &c. In the words under the notion of the choice, you may please to take notice of these severals : 1. A competition precedaneous to this choice, presumed here, but expressed in St. Matthew, Tíva OéλeтE EK Tŵv [Matt. duo, "which of the two will ye," &c. 2. The competitors, Barabbas and Christ. 3. The choice itself, not only preferring one before the other, non hunc, sed, but 1. absolutely rejecting of one, non hunc, not this man; and then by way of necessary refuge pitching upon the other, Non hunc, sed Barabbam, "Not this man, but Barabbas.” And of these in this order. And first, of the first, that there is a competition, before what the competitors are, or what the choice. 1. I say that there is a competition, a canvass, or plying, HAMMOND. xxvii. 17.] |